After America achieved independence the new government did not get around to selling any lands until the opening of the Public Domain in 1803. 

This means those states who had existed prior to this distributed their lands within the colony/state and did not have federal lands as well as a couple of other states that would have special provisions.

States that distributed their own lands: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia - but the table below shows that some (like Georgia) had a mix of state lands and Public Domain.



The Public Domain - Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

1803 the Government organized its new land policy  (Ohio was the "test run").  The plan was to:

1. Dispose of all western lands and make lots of money (it didn't happen quite that way because there was just too much land to make it that valuable at the time).

2. Before grants could be made Native titles had to be negotiated and removed (as in resettle the native population in many cases) and land surveyed into rectangular townships.  Each township would be 6 miles square and have 36 sections, each a mile square.

3. Land would be dispersed through the land office

4. Pre-Civil war service usually brought bounty rights of some sort to free land

5. Valid land titles that had previously been gotten from the British, French or Spanish would be honored

Over a billion acres was disposed of

Google Books has a copy of "The Public Domain: Its History With Statistics published 1881 which is very helpful particularly if your ancestor had some special kind of claim like a railroad grant or timber grant

in 1862 Bounty Land Warrants were replaced by the Homestead Act which allowed people to settle up to 160 acres of public land if they lived on it for five years, grew crops & made improvements.  You didn't pay for the land itself but you did have to pay a filing fee.

Claimants had to show U.S. citizenship OR had to have filed declaration of intent.  The Case Files went to Washington D.C. They are now in the National Archives.  In some cases they contained certified copies of naturalization and the final file usually had name, age, address, description of the tract, date they established residence, number and relationship of members in the family and what they grew.

1877 came the Desert Land Act which tried to entice people to places very dry places by offering them 640 acres.  In 1904 a similar act tried to get people to settle in western Nebraska.

Homesteading ended in the 1930s

The place to begin for Public Domain Patents is the Bureau of Land Management Site 

Guides to the Township & Range System:

For an overview of the Township & Range System check out Wikipedias Public Land Survey System which has really good illustrations and content

To FIND the place described in the patent try:

GeoCommunicator - If you know the nearest town this is easiest to use
 On the menu to the left choose:
 MAP VIEWER and a new window will open showing a map of the us
 Choose the PLACE NAME button on the top menu - enter your town, state

a similar tool is EarthPoint and Google Earth.  You have to purchase software for some fancier options but it will locate a place & its township & range for free on Google Earth.  (Make sure you have downloaded Google Earth before you try it!)


Form for mapping a township
Form for mapping a section
 

                                                 Anne Livingston   @WVC Library