Of settlement in America. - Which are the best areas for Germans to settle there.

The United States of North America progress unchecked with a very great speed on the way of enlargement and power. Their boundaries in the west constantly expand through tracts of the wilderness. Monstrous reaches of the most splendid and most fruitful land in the rough condition of nature still wait for people who will transform them into fruitful fields. Also the monstrous stretch along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean is still not cultivated and populated by far to the degree that most European states are. There is still room to be found there for many millions of industrious and fortunate people and for immigrations for thousands of years.

The westerly direction one considers the one that is prescriptive for the nature of the German because the climate there is almost like his own; but indeed a person can get used to every kind of climate. I would like to assert that the climate in Pennsylvania is more healthful than ours, if one lives as moderately there as here. But if he wants to go west, then the banks of the Ohio, Wabash and Miami are preferably recommended for his settlement. But the German and in particular the Lower Saxon is too very much used to convivial life that one should advise him to go into the wilderness alone even though he could gain the greatest riches of the earthly world there; it would rather then be in the great company of countrymen and even then the Lower Saxon countryman would not necessarily adapt himself because he is too distrustful and fickle, also too indecisive and fearful.

It is most assuredly certain that if there were entrepreneurs who were in a position to lead large colonies of the latter mentioned Germans to those western territories named and were able to keep them together there, they could build themselves realms of Paradise. The opportunity for that is at hand. Nature did her part there, the climate and the earth there are completely receptive to it. Such entrepreneurs are welcome to the American government and it does its part to further and to favor big undertakings; nothing further is lacking but that the German, especially the leader of a large colony already on this side of America, transform himself into an American which takes several points into account. This is the most difficult but the most thoroughly necessary task. Already underway he has to eat with his people out of one platter and drink out of one cup and treat them generally as more than friends, as charges, so that in America at least they do not become aware of too great a difference between the relationship of the overlords and their households there and of their own. There would be further advice to such an entrepreneur, that he lead with him only a few or no single persons at all, but rather for the most part families that could not scatter so easily and that he not take everyone haphazardly who offered himself, but rather only honest people in his colony, have them all swear oaths and make an official contract with them in which without consideration he could and had to promise them big advantages. Such contracts there have full validity.

Without following the points mentioned, every undertaking to lead a colony of Lower Germans there would indisputably founder. Also for such it is necessary that agents be sent out in advance who would pick out a suitable place for settlement, have the government of the United States step off and survey a stretch of land and take care of all necessary preparations in advance.

In addition to Pennsylvania and the western states Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, the southern part of the state of New York is also suitable to settlement by Germans. Under the most advantageous terms good and suitable land is constantly offered there for sale to actual settlers; whoever can pay at once can get the best, but still uncuItivated rough wheatland for 1 1/2 dollars an acre even there where the shell of the grain separates very easily. In western Pennsylvania in the winter of 1825 at a public sale 15,000 acres of woodland were sold, every hundred for 73 cents, because no one wanted to bid more and the auctioneer had the assignment to sell to the highest bidder. (73 cents are approximately, in our money, 23 Groschen, thus 100 acres of land for 23 Groschen!) Private land in America right now is generally dirt cheap, except near big cities or navigable streams where it too, however, is depressed in price. Naturally the price of land accords too with the demand for grain and grain prices which presently are considerably depressed, something the spoiled farmer now very painfully bemoans. Almost all the farmers have more actual land than they can cultivate; for in the times of high grain prices several years ago they bought tremendously much land in order to speculate with it and many borrowed big sums in addition from the banks where it was always gladly paid out to them at six percent interest; no one sensed the coming low grain prices with the end of the war in Europe. On account of that then many could not come up with the interest and not only forfeited their bought land which no longer had the fifth of its worth as it did at the time when they bought it with great desire, but also their goods were sold by court action often for a tenth of their worth. Many lost their complete fortune or else a considerable part of it for just this reason, that they had vouchers for their friends and neighbors. Thus fidelity and faith were lost. Many used the worst means to salvage a part of their goods. They went to the authorities and swore that they were no longer worth fifteen dollar and more is not necessary in Pennsylvania to deceive your creditors.

Each week the newspapers are full of announcements that plantations and land will be sold for the highest bid and when it happens by an appointed auctioneer, it often occurs that it is knocked down dirt cheap. The individual German, even if he has only a small bit of capital in his possession, finds constant opportunity there to buy even cultivated land with a dwelling and farm buildings cheaply. I know of many examples where an acre of such land including the buildings did not come to five dollars; but this was the case with small plantations of from twelve to twenty acres on which a small log house and a barn of the same stood.

There are also rich people in Philadelphia and other cities who bought whole stretches of land when the grain prices were very high with the intention of making a lot from it, who now very gladly sell it again under the price just to be rid of it. One also meets everywhere rich and well-to-do farmers whose plantations have become too small with the increase of their families and children capable of work and for this reason they sell then and buy themselves bigger ones again. Many also have the inclination to move to another region of Pennsylvania or to Ohio and for this reason sell their property. A large portion of Germans living in that state consists of Pennsylvanians who are for the most part well satisfied; yet several of them came back again during my stay because they could not rightly get used to it there.

It is not a trait of the German at all to show himself enterprising by going in to the wilderness, settling there and clearing stretches of forest; he loves the convivial life too much; he stays far too gladly in the vicinity of his countrymen. One finds not a single example that a German went so far west that he could have come in contact with the savages; he was not the one up to now who moved the borders there further and first cleared the land at the same. It was Americans themselves, emigrants from the north of America, from the states of New England, from the two Canadas. These people have by nature a special drive toward restlessness and wandering. They, more acquainted with the nature of the soil, persevering and tenacious with the first difficulties, first cleared the stretches of forest, farmed necessitously on them, but left them soon again, went on to start anew with it. If the German up to now cleared new land, he chose regions for it that were already more cultivated and where the proximity of earlier settlements of German promised him an active mutual exchange and with it alleviation and support. He rather follows his track, becomes the next owner of an only half cultivated property and improves it. He loves it and does not leave it again to go still farther west.

The United States are now the lords of all lands of the northern continent outside of South America and the British possessions. All future settlement have to recognize their sovereignty, consider themselves as parts of the same and be subject to their laws, although within the same all individual colonies and corporations are granted the greatest and freest movement.

The Indians or rightly the first Americans whose number decreases with each year and whom one estimates to be approximately 300,000 withdraw to the west from the lands that they have surrendered by sale or treaty to the United States. No one except the government of the United States has the right to buy land from them.

The mass of yet unsold natural land which is in the hands of the government of the United States, counting only that to which the savages no longer lay claim, is monstrously huge. It extends to over 600 million acres and lies in the states Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Illinois, in their territories Michigan, Northwestern, Alabama and Missouri. The huge stretches of yet uncultivated land which is still to be found in the old states already sold and is to be found in the possession of corporations and private persons.

Public land on the maps is divided up into townships and section. Each township is an area of six English square miles and contains 36 sections. Each section is one square mile and contains 640 acres, and each acre forty three thousand four hundred ninety-seven (43.497) square feet, each calculated at twelve inches. The sections are numbered from 1 to 36; No. 16 in the center is usually for the establishment and maintenance of a school for the township (section area) and the three adjacent numbers reserved for the government to dispose of as it sees fit at a later time. A certain number of townships make a county and a certain number of counties a territory, in which a land office or bureau is erected where sales are finalized and also the maps and descriptions of fields are kept for public purview.

Thus the states are made up. The territories enter into the union as states as soon as they total sixty thousand free inhabitants. Up to that time they stand under the control of Congress which names a governor who rules them according to republican statutes.

The land offices are:

In the state of Ohio in the following cities:

Cincinnati, Steubenville, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Wooster, Marietta.

In the state of Indiana:

Huntsville, East of Prairie River, West of Pearl River, Miledgeville.

In the state of Illinois

Kaskaskia, Shawneetown, Edwardsville.

In the territory of Missouri

St. Louis,- and

In the territory of Michigan

Detroit

These land offices stand under the direction of the General Land Office in Washington in which the patents for the purchases are drawn up and signed by the president of the United States.

In the land offices named, however, no one can buy less than a quarter section, namely one hundred sixty acres. The usual price of land is two dollars an acre. A quarter of the sale price is usually paid right away and the rest in installments, within four years. With immediate cash payment the buyer receives an eight percent discount. Taxes he pays first after five years, after this time too he can first receive complete citizenship if he is a foreigner.

Source: Edited by Bryan Wright