Land Ordiance 1785
Land Ordiance of 1830
The Land Ordinance of 1785 dealt with these issues. As the states and Indians relinquished lands, government surveyors were to divide the territory into individual townships. Each township was to be square. Each side of the square was to be six miles in length, and the completed square would include a total of thirty-six square miles of territory. The town would then be divided into one-square mile sections, with each section encompassing 640 acres. Each section received its own number. Section sixteen was set aside for a public school. The federal government reserved sections eight, eleven, twenty-six, and twenty-nine to provide veterans of the American Revolution with land bounties for their service during the war. The government would sell the remaining sections at public auction. The minimum bid was 640 dollars per section or one dollar for every acre of land in each section.
The first portion of Ohio surveyed became known as the Seven Ranges. The northern boundary was an east to west line beginning where Pennsylvania’s western border intersected the Ohio River. Pennsylvania’s western border also served as the first north to south line. The surveyors plotted a total of eight lines, each six miles apart, in this first survey. The end result was seven north to south rows open for settlement, thus the name the Seven Ranges.
Although the government had now opened up parts of the Ohio Country for purchase settlement, the Confederation Congress continued to face many of the same difficulties that existed prior to the Ordinance of 1784 and the Land Ordinance of 1785. Indians failed to relinquish much of the land, and squatters continued to flood the area, refusing to pay the required sums for the land.