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Conflict and Fraud: Utah Public Land Surveys in the 1850s, the Subsequent Investigation and Problems with the Land Disposal System
Conflict and Fraud: Utah Public Land Surveys in the 1850s, the Subsequent Investigation and Problems with the Land Disposal System
BY THOMAS G. ALEXANDER
Between July 1855, when Surveyor General David H. Burr opened the Utah Surveying District office in Salt Lake City and April 1857, when he and several other federal officials fled the territory, the people of Utah and federal appointees engaged in heated and often violent controversies. No conflict created more distress than the battles over federal land surveys. As settlement in Utah proceeded, conflicts of varying causes and magnitudes ensued. Conflicts with survey officials led to violent attacks by Utahns on the surveyors and clerks and to charges by the surveyors and other federal officials that Utahns had rebelled against federal authority. President James Buchanan agreed with the charges of rebellion, removed all of the Utahns from appointive offices, and appointed a group of outsiders to territorial government positions. He also sent a military force to escort the appointees to Utah. Later investigations by the General Land Office showed that Burr’s deputies had conducted fraudulent surveys. These investigations also substantiated some of the complaints made by Utahns. Moreover, the frauds required expensive resurveys and clouded land titles. This article investigates the controversies and their results.
A group of men with their surveying equipment at a campground at Oak City in Millard County. Photograph taken by Harry Shipler, June 7, 1909.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
By the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican War, the United States acquired most of the American Southwest. In September 1850 Congress organized much of the Mexican Cession as Utah Territory. Since the federal government owned all of Utah’s land, original titles to real property came from the United States.
During the 1850s, and indeed throughout the entire late nineteenthcentury, Utah experienced problems in the administration of public lands both similar to and different from those of other Western territories.1 Many settlers throughout the West found that the land laws designed for the Midwest failed to address western conditions. The 1841 Preemption Act permitted the purchase of 160 acres of farm land for $1.25 per acre, and the Homestead Act of 1862 granted title to the same sized farm for a small filing fee. Congress had designed these laws for regions blessed with adequate growing-season rainfall. Most of the area west of the hundredth meridian lacked such rainfall.2
By using various methods some settlers could obtain larger acreages. Many purchased land with scrip issued to veterans or to land grant colleges. Some bought land in railroad grants, and not a few used dummy entrymen.3 After the passage of the Deseret Land Act in 1877, settlers could purchase 640 acres before land surveys were completed.
Settlers in the semi-arid West who relied on their families for labor often found it difficult to irrigate and operate a farm any larger than sixty to seventy acres with available and affordable technology. An 1889 study by Frederick Haynes Newell showed that farmers irrigated an average of sixty-eight acres in the semi-arid states, which was the average in Utah.4
Congress enacted different land rules for settling towns and cities. The 1844 Townsite Act authorized cities to patent up to 320 acres (a half section, one mile by half a mile). A revised act of 1867 allowed up to three sections (1920 acres—three miles by three miles) for cities up to five thousand inhabitants. By the time the Utah land office opened in March 1869, Salt Lake City’s 12,400 citizens had already spread beyond that limited area, and because of its large size, in 1870 Congress passed a special act allowing larger areas.5
Until 1869, none of Utah’s 82,000 inhabitants had even a squatter’s right to the land they occupied. After years of lobbying, Utah Congressional Delegate William H. Hooper secured General Land Office (GLO) and Congressional support for a land office in Salt Lake City. The land office opened in 1869.6
Congress had authorized land offices in Idaho Territory in 1866 and Montana and Arizona Territories in 1867. All three territories had been organized after the establishment of Utah Territory, and all three had smaller populations.7
Largely because of the large and cohesive Mormon population, historians have tended to emphasize the conditions that made Utah different from other territories. With certain exceptions, however, settlers staked out land for acquisition in the Beehive Territory just as they did in other places.8 Historians have cited ad nauseam in one form or another Brigham Young’s statement of July 25, 1847, that no one should “sell neither should He buy any but evry man should [have?] his land measured of to him for City & farming purposes what He could till.”9 In addition, some have also cited the deeds signed during the abortive consecration movement of the mid-1850s which assigned title to lands to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church), as evidence of church members’ subservience to Young. In fact, however, neither Young nor the church actually took title to the property. Moreover, local county selectmen (generally called commissioners today), who, as Jeffery Johnson has shown were generally local citizens—not high church leaders or general authorities — ordinarily regulated the distribution of land. That they were also locally prominent people only makes Utah Territory more rather than less like other territories. In addition, people began quite soon after settlement to buy and sell locally recognized customary titles to land.10
Instead of keeping land off the market or placing it under Young’s control, the Utah legislature passed a law in 1852 to facilitate private ownership and sale of real property. This law, that Governor Young approved, provided a color of title that offered some assurance that the actual occupants could identify property on which they lived and had made improvements. The 1852 act authorized county surveyors to conduct cadastral surveys of parcels of land, title to which county courts (generally called commissions today) transferred to occupants on payment of a small surveying and recording fee. Original and subsequent title holders could sell and transfer the land, their improvements, and these titles through quitclaim deeds and surveying certificates. Such legislation, the local people hoped, would insure a right to the land to those who actually occupied it and guard against claim jumping until the federal government authorized its legal acquisition.11
In effect Utah’s laws had the same motivation as the claims associations organized in the Midwest to protect actual settlers against the intrusions of later immigrants, speculators, and claim jumpers. These associations generally provided “a title registration system,” prior to the organization of county governments. If the land a settler actually occupied did not match the boundaries of the subsequent federal rectangular surveys, the registration provided a means of conveying land to the actual settlers. Paul Gates, the preeminent authority on land issues, argues that “it is doubtful whether any important sales of public lands were held between 1835 and 1860 at which such combinations did not function, and almost invariably they accomplished their objectives.”12
Unlike the claim associations, however, Utah’s customary titles relied on a territorial statute and the actions of the county authorities, rather than a voluntary association of land holders. Since they recognized that the county titles had only customary authority and they reached only as far as the people willingly recognized them, local officials memorialized Congress and various administrations to extend the national land laws to Utah Territory.13
In addition, the legislature tried to regulate orderly access to resources, such as timber for construction, which generally grew in the mountains rather than on valley property as it did in the Midwest and parts of the Pacific Coast. As Leonard Arrington has shown, they did this through laws granting stewardship over canyons with access to timber to county courts or to prominent individuals. Instead of granting monopolistic control, however, these grants contained restrictions that required citizens’ access, subject to payment of tolls to defray the cost of building and maintaining access roads.14
During the 1850s, Presidents Franklin Pierce in 1853 and James Buchanan in 1858 both recommended the extension of the land disposal laws over Utah. Congress declined to pass the necessary enabling legislation, however, whether because the government had not extinguished any Indian titles in Utah, or because of anti-Mormon prejudice, or both, is unclear.15 The failure to extinguish Indian titles made Utahns illegal occupants not only on public lands but also on Native American lands as well.16
Opening the surveying district in 1855 by newly appointed territorial surveyor general David H. Burr, offered some hope of restoring order. Before his appointment, Burr was recognized as a renowned lawyer and cartographer mapping in the United States, Great Britain, and India.17
Like other surveyors general, Burr negotiated contracts with deputy surveyors who did much of the field work. Among those he hired were his son Eugene, as chief clerk, his two sons, Frederick H. and David A. along with Joseph Troskolawski, Columbus L. Craig, and Charles Mogo as deputy surveyors.18
The GLO’s published instructions to Burr and other surveyors general required deputies to survey lines for townships, sections, and quarter sections. Deputies were instructed to implant monuments of substantial wooden or stone posts deeply in the ground on township, section, and quarter section corners. They were to write field notes describing the location of the corners and the lay of the land. They were to deposit charcoal, stone, or a charred stake, called memorials, beneath the monument and to raise mounds of earth around the monuments, around which they were to dig a square trench to a spade’s depth. At fourteen inches from each of the four sides of the trench they were to dig pits.19
Public land surveys were essential before homesteads could be acquired by settlers. This family constructed the first house in the Blue Creek settlement in northern Box Elder County.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
GLO regulations required Burr to check the surveys, maps, and field notes for accuracy and conformity to regulations. Clerks in his office copied the field notes and transferred the information to plat maps which the land office later used to designate land for sale. The GLO also deposited a copy of the field notes and plat maps in Washington, D. C. By the spring of 1857, when Burr suspended surveys because of the Utah War, deputies had surveyed more than 2.5 million acres on nine contracts.
During Burr’s tenure as surveyor general, controversies over his actions and those of his employees and contractors led to verbal and sometimes violent physical conflicts with Utahns. Some Utahns filed a series of sworn affidavits alleging fraudulent surveys.20
Burr detailed some of the surveyors’ and others’ complaints in a letter to the commissioner of the GLO shortly after his arrival in 1855. He objected to the extent of Utah’s cities by citing the size of Salt Lake City, and he alleged that Brigham Young controlled all the property by reproducing a copy of one of the deeds signed during the abortive United Order movementof the 1850s.21
In May 1856, Burr again complained to the GLO, this time about Utahns’ trespass on public lands. Late in January 1857, James Cummings, the clerk of Utah’s U. S. Territorial Supreme Court; Acting U. S. Attorney, Hosea Stout; and Territorial Marshal, Alexander McRae confronted Burr with a copy of his letter, which they had most likely obtained illegally. The three of them asserted the right of Utah settlers to occupy the public lands. In an argument similar to that used by squatters on lands in the Midwest, they said “that the country was theirs, that they would not permit this interference with their rights.” They told Burr to stop writing such letters and said that they would always know if he did so again, most likely because they had illegal access to the U. S. mails.22
In August 1856, Burr complained to GLO Commissioner, Thomas A. Hendricks, about violence against his employees. He said that William A. Hickman had directed three men to beat up and kill Troskolawski, but that William H. Hooper and Thomas Williams had intervened to save the deputy surveyor. In spite of Hooper’s and Williams’ situation as prominent Latter-day Saints and business partners of Brigham Young, Burr argued that “high authority” had counseled Hickman to mount the attack.23
Hosea Stout, acting U.S. Attorney for the Utah Territory
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Burr also forwarded a letter of August 1856 from Craig, charging the Utahns with poisoning the minds of the Indians against the surveyors and the government. Craig said the Utahns had told the Indians the surveyors “were measuring out the land in order to take possession of it, and would drive away the Mormons and kill the Indians.” The Indians, however, “said that they did not believe these stories, for the Mormons talked double.”24 The Utahns who contacted the Indians probably said the government wanted to take their land because they wanted the Indians’ support in disputes with the federal surveyors. Further, the Utahns were angry with the federal government for not opening a land office.
Craig also detailed some disagreements with the Utahns over trespasses by surveyors on planted fields. The Deseret News, the LDS church’s organ, had recommended that the settlers complain to the courts when trespass occurred. In general, however, Craig said that the surveyors had “hitherto met with no difficulty with them.” He had, however, received a judicial writ from the mayor of Payson complaining of trespasses. He had ignored it.25 Such conflicts seem to have amounted only to verbal jousting, because the Utahns really wanted the lands surveyed so they could obtain legal titles.26
In a letter submitted to the U. S. Attorney General on March 20, 1857, by Utah Judge John F. Kinney, Burr outlined further objections to conditions in Utah. Declining to consider Utahns as American citizens—which they were—Burr argued that they yielded “implicit obedience” to Brigham Young’s commands as law, while “trampling on the dearest rights of American Citizens.” Burr argued that members of the legislature obeyed Young explicitly and that they disregarded the laws of the United States. Burr also listed a number of complaints of conditions relevant to public lands. These included “grants of water, timber, &c the property of the U. S.” to prominent individuals. The grants, he argued, compelled “the settler . . . to pay the Grantees for all the timber and fire wood they use.” And, the “County Courts Control all the timber, water privileges and so forth.” He recommended that the federal government review laws the legislature passed and reject the “obnoxious ones.” He suggested also that the government establish a newspaper to “disseminate correct information.” Such measures together with “a small military force,” Burr believed would reform Utahns. He deplored grants to “Minions of the Priesthood” of “herd grounds,” in “neighboring Valleys . . . .” He said these grants, that he urged the government to annul, compelled “the settler to pay for pasturing his Cattle on the Public Domain.” He also charged that grantees had driven off some of the settlers who located on the public lands.27
Returning to a theme in his 1855 letter, Burr argued that the limits of the cities “are very extensive.” The leaders had done this, he said, to bring “as many of the Settlements as possible under the municipal regulations and ordinances.”
Burr also complained of other matters. These had to do with tax exemption for churches, remission of taxes and other tax laws, school tax votes, regulation of liquor, liens against property for debt, jurisdiction of the probate courts, inheritance laws, numbering of ballots, ferry grants, and limitation on the citation of precedents in court cases.
On March 28, 1857, Burr sent another letter from Utah explaining that he anticipated possible interference with his surveyors from Young and other church leaders because of their statements opposing the surveyors work, but he reported that none had taken place. Burr said, however, that Mogo had taken a large force of guards to accompany him on his surveys. He charged also that the Mormons had pulled down the houses of some who apostatized from the LDS church, and that all the federal judges except George Stiles had fled the territory and that Stiles too, intended to leave. He had thought the threats idle until the recent Parrish-Potter murders in Springville. He insisted that Brigham Young had ordered the murders. He wrote that he and the other federal officials would leave if they could have protection. However, Burr concluded, that he had remained in Utah in spite of threats against himself.28
The charge that Young ordered the Springville murders is at best controversial since the available evidence does not demonstrate Young’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, after Young learned of the murders, he met with Alvira Parrish, the widow of one of the victims and mother of another. When she explained what had happened, he insisted on his ignorance of the matter, and ordered the local leaders to return her husband’s property.29
Young, however, had been preaching with extreme imprudence, which may well have led Bishop Aaron Johnson in Springville to believe that he approved the murders of William and Beeson Parrish if they tried to leave the city. Young had given a number of violent sermons in which he preached Blood Atonement, the idea that Christ’s atonement did not cover all serious sins, and that the blood of such sinners must be shed to fulfill the atonement. In addition, he had compiled a list of twenty-eight suspects which he sent to President George A. Smith, a member of the church’s First Presidency, and Territorial Delegate John M. Bernhisel in July 1856, asking for further information about the people. One critic has called this “a hit list,” but there is no evidence that it was anything other than a request for information. The list included David H. Burr, and a number of deputy surveyors including his two sons and Joseph Troskolawski.30
In June 1857, Burr arrived in Washington, and again detailed his complaints against the people of Utah. He complained about the threats aimed at federal officials by Cummings, Stout, and McRae. He mentioned that the Utahns asserted “that the country, and all that appertained to it belongs to them; that their exertions had made it what it was; that they had earned it, and were determined to keep it, and would permit no interference with their rights.” He said that “Danites” had failed to mob and to destroy his office only because of “dissensions among the leaders.”31
Map of the proposed Indian Reservation south of Utah Lake on Spanish Fork Creek completed as part of the survey of the Utah Territory by David H. Burr.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Soon after Burr arrived in Washington, he learned in a letter from his clerk, C. G. Landon of attacks on his office staff. These resulted in the beatings of two clerks and attacks aimed at Mogo by a mob Burr characterized as “Danites.” Landon reported that the attack was by “a posse of Mormons” led by Richard Petit and Joseph A. Thompson. Landon wrote that after being beaten, he hid in a storeroom owned by merchant William Bell before fleeing to Placerville, California, where he was recovering from his beating.32 The Petit-Thompson attack apparently occurred in an attempt to locate and punish deputy surveyor Charles Mogo. Mogo, himself, had already fled to Laramie, leaving his pregnant wife, Margaret, who later arrived at Fort Bridger carrying her dead baby. Mogo subsequently served on the grand jury empanelled in December 1857 at Camp Scott by Justice Delana Eckels. The jury returned indictments for treason against Brigham Young, a number of other Mormon leaders, and a thousand unnamed persons. However, President James Buchanan’s amnesty proclamation invalidated the indictments. There is, however, considerable doubt the indictments were legal since Eckels empanelled the jury with people at Fort Bridger and Camp Scott, rather than according to law from the rolls of Utah property owners. The United States Supreme Court later ruled that judges had to follow Utah law in empanelling juries.33
Clearly, the charges that Burr made about the regulation of public lands and local grants of control over resources were partly true. His characterization of the attackers as “Danites” is clearly suspect. Leonard Arrington, who made a careful study of the problem, has concluded that although an organization of Danites existed in Missouri, no such organized body of assassins existed in Utah.34 Like people in other Western territories, Utahns experienced violence, but it was not generally centrally directed except during the Utah War.35
Moreover, as Arrington wrote, like the Midwestern land claim associations, Utahns used the customary titles and grants of land and resources to secure rather than prevent access for actual settlers. He points out that Utahns based such regulations on precedents they had learned in New England settlements. They viewed such regulations and grants “‘as a means of averting interminable controversies over this prime essential in food and crop production under arid conditions.’”36 In addition local authorities, on occasion, required settlers with excessive land to redistribute it to those with less or no land.37
In addition, Burr’s objections offered only one side of the controversy over land distribution and use and the activities of his surveyors. Utah citizens responded with their criticism. Critical of what he viewed as the superficiality of the surveys, territorial governor Young complained to Utah’s Congressional Delegate John M. Bernhisel calling the federal surveys “a great humbug.” He said that they were “of no earthly benefit.” The surveyors, he said, “stick down little stakes that the wind could almost blow over.” They had not, Young said, planted proper substantial post or stone monuments with memorials such as pits and subsurface charcoal to designate corners as regulations required. Within five years, he predicted, no “vestige of all they do will be left to mark where they have been.”38
In a letter to George A. Smith, John Taylor, and John Bernhisel, Young elaborated, calling Burr a “snarling puppy,” and charging the surveyor general with “swindling the Government extensively.” Questioning Burr’s ability “to run a line,” he labeled the surveys conducted by his deputies as “not worth a groat.” After taking jabs at Burr’s sons and “Trosky” (probably Troskolawski), he bridled that “in five weeks,” surveyor “Mosheo” (probably Mogo) had surveyed lines said to be “3500 miles” long. He also said that hearsay accused Mogo of killing a man in St. Louis. He believed that the deputies knew exactly what they had done since he believed that they had boasted openly “of swindling the Government.”39
Moreover, the GLO had already recognized Troskolawski’s penchant for conducting fraudulent surveys. In 1853 he had surveyed in California and after he left, the California surveyor general discovered his frauds. He reported them to the GLO, and Commissioner Hendricks ordered Burr to withdraw Troskolawski’s commission. 40 Later, Troskolawski launched his own riposte in the New York Herald wherein he said little about the fraudulent surveys, but rather complained about the attacks on federalagents and about the Mormons’ polygamous practices.41
Utahns, however, issued sworn affidavits complaining of the frauds. Affidavits came from businessman and later territorial delegate Hooper, who alleged the incompetency of Charles Mogo and his collusion with Burr. Thomas W. Cooke, a Salt Lake City carpenter, complained of the fraudulent surveys. Charles W. Moeller, one of Burr’s clerks detailed fraud and incompetency on the parts of the surveyors, the clerks, and Burr himself. Moeller’s affidavit is questionable, however, because he later repudiated it in a sworn affidavit before Judge Eckels.42 Moeller’s retraction is problematic, however, since subsequent investigations substantiated many of the charges in his original letter. They also corroborated the affidavits of Hooper and Cooke.
In spite of these affidavits, anti-Mormon prejudice and the charges made by federal officials supported by their patrons in Washington led the federal government to ignore for the time being these complaints of fraud and superficiality in Burr’s surveys. Instead, the administration seems to have lumped Burr’s allegations with those of others such as Kinney and Judge William W. Drummond to conclude that the Utahns had rebelled against the federal government. Such charges led to the dispatch of 2,500 troops— perhaps the “small military force” Burr had called for—as a posse to accompany Governor Alfred Cumming and other federal officials to replace the Utahns who held federal appointments. All this occurred without notifying Young of his removal as territorial governor. Thereafter, the federal government appointed no Mormons to territorial offices until 1893, except Hosea Stout, who served as Utah’s Attorney General from 1862 to 1866.43
On reflection, after the Utah War of 1857-58, President James Buchanan seems to have understood there might be problems with the surveys. In June 1857, after Burr returned to Washington, the Interior Department put him on leave and declined to reappoint him. In 1859, after the Utah War, Buchanan sent his friend Samuel C. Stambaugh of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as a new surveyor general. Stambaugh had orders to investigate the charges made about the surveys that Burr’s deputies had conducted.44
Stambaugh’s investigation and subsequent investigations by surveyors revealed that Burr’s deputies had perpetrated massive frauds on the federal government and the Utahns. This investigation focused first on the surveys of Charles Mogo, who had been the apparent object of the earlier PetitThompson attack. Operating under Burr’s directions, Mogo had surveyed 320,000 acres in central and southern Utah. Burr had approved his surveys both of agricultural and grazing land, though surveyors could not legally survey grazing land. Stambaugh found, as the Utahns had charged, that Mogo had either planted no stakes or small ones, no mounds or insubstantial ones and no trenches, pits, or subsurface memorials as required by written GLO instructions.45
Stambaugh reported that his investigation of Burr’s actions “disclosed disregard, on the part of the late surveyor general, of the laws governing the surveys.” The “examination of the surveys . . . [showed] remissness on the part of that officer [Burr] in not providing proper checks upon his deputies.” Stambaugh reported his findings to GLO Commissioner J. M. Edmunds, who transmitted them to Interior Secretary Caleb B. Smith.46 Mogo had already defended himself in a letter to GLO Commissioner Thomas A. Hendricks in February 1858 in which he denied that he had conducted fraudulent surveys. Secretary Smith authorized payment to Mogo for the survey of 5,000 acres of agricultural land even though Stambaugh’s investigation had shown that the corner monuments were either inadequate or nonexistent.47
Four years later, Lincoln’s Interior Secretary John P. Usher reexamined Smith’s ruling and authorized a larger payment to Mogo for surveys of 12,800 acres. Stambaugh said that Mogo had surveyed 5,000 acres of agricultural land, but Mogo’s field notes had classified an additional 7,800 acres as agricultural. Usher authorized the payment on the basis of Mogo’s field notes rather than Stambaugh’s investigation. Moreover, Usher ruled that Burr’s deputies needed to follow only the general guidelines in congressional law rather than GLO regulations. This ruling authorized the payment for the inadequate or nonexistent corner monuments.48 Although Stambaugh found extensive fraud in the surveys, department instructions hampered him in his attempt to make a complete examination of the work done by Burr’s deputies. GLO Commissioner Joseph Wilson ordered him to investigate only those areas against which specific charges of malfeasance had been made. He denied Stambaugh’s request to reestablish defective markers, and also denied Stambaugh’s request to hire competent local surveyors to assist in the examination. 49 Ignoring Wilson’s orders, Stambaugh hired territorial surveyor general Jesse Fox to assist him, and in December 1860, Wilson, now a lame duck because of the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in November, ordered Stambaugh to explain why he had done so.50
A birds eye view of Richmond, Cache County, in 1875.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Most seriously, Stambaugh allowed his office procedures to deteriorate and permitted his chief clerk to take an extended leave. Stambaugh failed to submit his 1859 annual report on time, his correspondence became extremely sloppy, and he failed to complete the reports on some of the examinations promptly. Moreover, Stambaugh was the appointee of a Democratic administration, and in August 1861, the Lincoln administration removed him and appointed Samuel R. Fox of Madison, Wisconsin, as his replacement.51
Fox served for less than a year before Congress combined the Utah surveying district with Colorado’s and moved the office to Denver. In consolidating the district, Commissioner Edmunds pointed out that although deputies had surveyed 2.5 million acres in Utah no one had purchased any land.52 Edmunds undoubtedly knew that Utahns hadn’t acquired any land because Congress hadn’t opened a land office to offer public lands for sale. Both Edmunds and the Colorado Surveyor General falsely asserted that the Utahns did not want to purchase public land.53
William H. Hooper, Utah Territorial Delegate to Congress who secured a land office for Salt Lake City.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The canard that Utahns did not want a land office or failed to purchase public lands earned a rebuke from the territorial legislature and Utah’s Congressional Delegate. In 1868, Delegate Hooper introduced legislation, which was enacted to reopen surveys and the Utah Surveying District, and to open a land office. The Deseret News editorialized: “We know that our enemies have taken especial pains to circulate the idea that we do not want to have a Surveyor-General or a Land Office here—that we do not want to acknowledge the rights of the Government to give us titles to our lands. But by such false-hoods they hope to prejudice those in power against us, and prevent us from obtaining our rights.”54
It was not until 1869, however, in spite of the public knowledge of the fraudulent surveys under the Burr regime, that Congress made the first appropriations for new surveys in Utah. That year John A. Clark, who had previously served as Surveyor General of New Mexico, moved to Utah as the surveyor general. He began the surveys in areas along the two Transcontinental Railroad lines in northern Utah to help the railroad companies obtain their land grants.55
Shortly after he arrived in Salt Lake City, Clark continued the investigationsbegun by Stambaugh of Burr’s survey and field notes and office files. In a report to Land Office Commissioner Wilson, Clark responded with surprise that “any of . . . [the surveys] should have been received and approved by the Surveyor General, or paid for by the Department, for they bear inherent evidence of dishonesty and fraud.” He picked Township 1 South, Range 1 West, which included stretches of the meandering Jordan River, surveyed by Burr’s son Frederick “as a specimen of the whole.” Frederick Burr had designated the corners of his traverse, but had established no corner monuments, as regulations required. After examining the survey results and the field notes, Clark concluded that Frederick Burr had run only part of the survey on the ground. The remainder he had apparently concocted in his head.56
Commenting on Burr’s surveys in general, Clark found that his “Deputy Surveyors generally surveyed the township lines and established corners by raising a little mound of earth or sand six inches to a foot high, with sometimes a post.” They apparently planted no substantial wood or stone monuments, memorials, trenches, or pits to mark the location of the corners, as the GLO’s regulations required. And, Clark found that instead “of running the subdivision lines regularly, they run [sic] two or three lines across the township, establishing corners thereon as above[from which] they obtained some knowledge of the interior of the township from which they made up the field notes. No surveyor general in their [his] examination, should have been deceived by their notes, for they bear evidence upon their face of fraud and dishonesty sufficient to condemn them.”57
Clark and his successors also re-established some of the corners that Burr’s deputies had failed to mark. In re-establishing the principal meridian, base line, and correcting parallels, Clark’s surveyors and subsequent deputies found that Burr’s deputies had failed to plant many of the corner monuments, again as required by published regulations. The new deputies planted stones for the corners.58
Incredibly, however, after considering Clark’s report, GLO Commissioner Joseph S. Wilson called the differences between what Clark found and Burr’s surveys, “trifling irregularities,” and therefore, could not reject the surveys without better evidence. Wilson opined that the lapse of seven to fifteen years may have caused some obliteration of the survey and the monuments. He also pointed to an error made by Clark’s draftsman in reviewing one of the Jordan River’s meanders.59
Several things seem evident from the rejection of Clark’s investigation. Clark made a mistake by providing examples rather than detailing all of the frauds in the various surveys as Stambaugh had done with the Mogo surveys. This is perhaps understandable because unlike Stambaugh, Clark had begun supervising and examining new surveys while Stambaugh had only the job of conducting an investigation. Commissioner Wilson, however, made a serious and costly error of his own by declining to credit Clark’s evidence of the absence of survey monuments, memorials, trenches, and pits, and Clark’s information on the failure to run the section and quartersection lines and to establish corners for the 36 sections in each township. Clark was right, the building of small piles of dirt or sand and the occasional planting of posts did not constitute permanent corners. Surveying regulations and standard practice required the erection of substantial monuments, trenches, and pits. These were absolutely necessary to avoid costly resurveys, and to provide evidence so that land purchasers could determine the location of property lines on the ground. Contrary to Wilson’s assertion, these corner markers, even had they been made with substantial posts rather than stone should have survived for decades and not have disappeared in seven to fifteen years as the unmarked corners or the small dirt mounds or stakes had done. After 1870, surveyors had to plant a stone rather than wooden monument, and at least since 1930, surveyors have planted steel pipes filled with concrete as monuments.
Because the GLO rejected Clark’s recommendation and accepted surveys by Burr’s deputies, with the exception of some of Mogo’s, the condition of surveys and by extension titles in Utah remained in chaos for some time. In an attempt to correct the fraudulent surveys, in January 1869, Clark recommended the resurvey of Burr’s deputies’ work. Wilson rejected Clark’s request, pointing out that Clark could authorize only the resurvey of Mogo’s rejected surveys because he could not legally use congressional survey money for resurveys. Resurveys, Wilson wrote, required a special appropriation.60
Other federal officials and elected Utah officials worked together, futilely, to try to secure funds to undo Burr’s mischief. In February 1869, George A. Smith, president of the territorial council, Orson Pratt, speaker of the territorial house who had established the intersection of the prime meridian and base line for surveys in Utah, and Edwin Higgins, acting governor of Utah Territory, memorialized Congress, asking for $55,000 for surveys and another $60,000 for resurveys. Smith and Pratt were Mormons, but Higgins was not. These three dignitaries pointed out that Burr’s surveys of public lands in Utah were:
In March 1869, Utah Congressional Delegate, William H. Hooper introduced a memorial from the Utah legislature asking for money for resurveys.62
In August 1870, long after Congress failed to appropriate additional funds, Courtland C. Clements, previously registrar of the Salt Lake City land office replaced John Clark as Surveyor General. Clements had no money for resurveys, and only $25,000 for surveys and $18,000 for office expenses.63
To his intense dissatisfaction, Clements also ran into Mogo’s faulty surveys. In early 1872, Clements submitted the results of a survey by Augustus D. Ferron of Township 13 South, Range 5 East in central Utah. Ferron resurveyed a township that Mogo had surveyed in 1856 and Burr had approved on February 25, 1857. After comparing the two surveys, the GLO asked Clements to find out why “the topography of the country on the two plats of survey are [were] so entirely different as to throw discredit upon one of the surveys.”64
Orson Pratt, speaker of the Utah Territorial Assembly who established the intersection of the prime meridian and base line for surveys in Utah.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Clements dispatched J. H. Cox and John F. Sanders along with Ferron to examine the township that Ferron and Mogo had surveyed. The three of them went over the ground and questioned the oldest settlers in the area; all said that they had never seen a stake or a corner in the area. Clements concluded: “When I consider that several townships returned as surveyed by Charles Mogo about the time he claims to have surveyed this township, were rejected on account of fraud, I am led to question the correctness of any of his work.”65
An examination of the plats of Ferron’s survey and subsequent surveys of different portions of the township show that Ferron’s is most likely the accurate survey. Current Bureau of Land Management (BLM) survey plats for the township include surveys of portions of the township by Ferron, Adolph Jessen, H. D. Page, and J. M. Lentz in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and other more recent surveys. The records list Mogo’s fraudulent survey as well, but it is blanked out with the notation that it is unavailable!66
In an apparent attempt to prevent frauds like those associated with the Burr administration, in 1873 GLO Commissioner Willis Drummond sent detailed instructions to Clements. “In your instructions to Deputy Surveyors,” he wrote, “you will require them in every instance to establish the corner boundaries in a permanent manner, and to describe them fully in their notes…The description ‘established as per instructions,’” he said, “is not considered sufficient, and you will therefore direct them to state in the field notes the size and diameter of the posts; depth set in the ground, or the length, breadth, and thickness of the stone, the size of the mound with the length width and depth of the pits, which must correspond with the requirements of the Manual of Surveying Instructions.”67
Clements also tried to meet the needs of Utah settlers. He forwarded a letter from James H. Martineau, Cache County Surveyor, on the needed resurvey of 20,000 acres because old surveys had been obliterated. Relenting to some degree, the GLO ruled that Clements could authorize resurveys where absolutely necessary to restore lines for future surveys. This was easier for Clements to justify in Cache County because Burr’s deputy surveyors had conducted some of the previous surveys in irregular patches. The GLO commissioner also authorized Martineau to conduct resurveys using the field notes of surveys by Burr’s deputies providing that the settlers paid the costs. Some apparently did so in order to secure clear titles to their land. This, of course, threw the burden of paying for Burr’s frauds on the local community.68
In 1873, Nathan Kimball, an Indiana native and Civil War major general, assumed the surveyor general’s post. He served until his appointment as Ogden’s postmaster in 1877.69 He pointed out to Land Office Commissioner Willis Drummond that surveyors had surveyed only parts of many townships, often without regard to the rectangular survey system. He warned, that resulting “conflicting and irregular” surveys could “require re-surveys at an additional cost to the Government.”70
James Henry Martineau a pioneer surveyor in Utah.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Most important, Kimball recognized the inapplicability of current federal land laws to the semi-arid region and that under existing law and conditions, large acreages would remain unsold. “Under existing laws, no one can obtain title to public lands excepting under the pre-emption and homestead laws, limiting the settler to 160 acres, and requiring actual settlement.” These laws compel selections “along and near the springs and streams, where irrigation can be had at little cost, thus leaving the upper or mesa land, equally as valuable, unoccupied and unsold, because of the greater labor and cost of irrigation.” He urged Congress to amend the law to “permit the sale for cash.” Purchasers would use their money to make the lands productive, he argued, while returning “millions of dollars to the national and State treasuries.”71
In part, the problem of the failure to survey and sell usable lands resulted from the laws which prohibited the survey of any land suitable only for grazing. Mogo and Burr had tried to survey such lands, but the GLO rejected these surveys. In spite of the laws, as indicated, settlers simply drove their livestock onto such land. In 1877, Arizona Surveyor General John Wasson clearly saw the problem created by this law. He recognized that amendments to the law which would permit the survey of grazing land would meet the needs of settlers who worked as ranchers rather than as crop farmers.72
Some ranchers in the Arid West took advantage of the 640 acres authorized by the Desert Land Act of 1877 to buy land. Often, farmers with limited means irrigated up to 80 acres, and herded livestock on the remainder. Some used these holdings as a base as they grazed their livestock illegally on public lands or fashioned a larger ranch as family members filed on additional acres.73
In 1916, Congress recognized the legitimacy of ranching with the passage of the Stock Raising Homestead Act that permitted ranchers to homestead 640 acres suitable for grazing.74 Even 640 acres was far too small for a respectable ranch, and most ranchers continued to graze their livestock on public lands. In fact, the debates on the Stock Raising Homestead Act turned on the question of whether 640 acres was sufficient for herd grounds.
Congress, however, opted for public ownership of most semi-arid grazing land. It established national forests under provisions of the General Revision Act of 1892, and the Forest Service Organic Act of 1897. Congress organized the remainder of the public lands suitable for grazing under the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act. (Today, the Forest Service and the BLM, the Grazing Service’s successor, continue to regulate grazing on federal lands.)
Federal rectangular surveys served as the basis for land designation in the United States. Utah’s surveys during the 1850s were the beginning of the designationof plots of land not only for private, but also for public use. Clearly, as we have seen, they present a both sordid and violent story.
For instance, a dispute over grazing land flared up in central Utah’s Rush Valley in August 1859. Utahn Daniel Spencer had been grazing livestock on the land prior to the arrival of the army that now claimed it as a military herd ground. Howard Spencer, Daniel Spencer’s nephew, confronted a military unit sent to remove his uncle’s herds. Whether provoked or not, the confrontation led Sergeant Ralph Pike to bash Howard Spencer over the head with his rifle butt. A surgeon at Camp Floyd saved Spencer’s life. Weeks later, in retribution, Howard Spencer shot and killed Pike before a crowd in Salt Lake City as the sergeant emerged from a judicial hearing. In vengeance, soldiers from Pike’s unit trashed Cedar Fort, a small Utah town several miles north of Camp Floyd. Spencer escaped at the time, but in 1889 was apprehended, tried and acquitted for the murder.75
In October 1866, a dispute over lands in Salt Lake City led to the murder of Dr. J. King Robinson. Robinson had constructed a workshop, and was planning on constructing a hospital at Warm Springs, a public park in the northwestern section of Salt Lake City. The city’s police tore down Robinson’s workshop and warned him not to try to build another. Though claimed as a public park, because no land office had yet been opened in Utah, Warm Springs was still legally public land. The city administration considered Robinson a claim jumper. Robinson, however, hired Robert N. Baskin as an attorney to file a suit against the police and the city. After he instituted the suit, an unknown person called Robinson from his bed at midnight on the pretext of taking him to assist someone who was injured in a mule accident. The man led him to the corner of Main and Third South, where he was brutally murdered. No one was ever brought to trial for the murder.76
Grave marker in the Fort Douglas cemetery for Dr. J. King Robinson who was killed in Salt Lake City in October 1866 in a dispute over land.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
What role might proper surveys and the prior opening of a land office have played in these two incidents? In the Spencer-Pike incident, it would most likely have played no role. Daniel Spencer could not legally have acquired the land both because the federal government did not sell grazing land, and because Col. Edward J. Steptoe had designated the land as a military reservation in 1854 when he was in the territoryto investigate the earlier massacre of Captain John W. Gunnison and his survey party. Had a land office opened, it would probably not have mattered.
Had a land office been opened, Salt Lake City might have included Warm Springs within the city’s boundaries as a public park. The historical record does not reveal whether the city would have incorporated Warm Springs as part of its half section under the 1844 Townsite Act. Clearly, however, many residentsof Salt Lake City considered Robinson a claim jumper on a public park. After the federal government passed the 1870 Salt Lake Townsite Act, which authorized Salt Lake City officials to claim more land than allowed earlier in townsite acts, Salt Lake City designated Warm Springs as a public park. We will never know if any connection existed between the murder of J. King Robinson and the government’s failure to extend the land laws to Utah.
Vague federal land laws led to conflict over ownership of what most considered public rather than private property such as Salt Lake Cityʼs Warm Springs, whose public bath house is shown here.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
In retrospect, Utahns passed through exceedingly difficult days during which they occupied public land and watched federal land surveys and awaited the opening of a land office. They witnessed both fraudulent and inadequate surveys under David Burr’s administration. They suffered through the results of those surveys as they paid for new surveys while trying to purchase land after the belated opening of a land office in 1869.
While approving fraudulent surveys, Burr shot complaint after complaint to Washington about the actions of Utahns. It seemed that the hatred Mormons had incurred in the Midwest followed them to Utah with the federal officials. In return, the Utahns retaliated against Burr’s office staff and deputies with violent attacks. The Buchanan administration sent an army to quell a “rebellion.” In defense of Buchanan, we should note that he sent some of the correspondence of surveyors to Congress without comment, which Congress published. The response is understandable given the outrageous rhetoric of Brigham Young and other leaders, and the murders such as those of William and Beeson Parrish and Duff Potter. In the long run, however, the belated investigations substantiated the Utahns charges of fraudulent surveys.
It may be possible to separate the fraudulent surveys from Burr’s charges that the Utahns were breaking the law in their uses of public lands and resources. Many of those charges were true, but the actions of Utah’s American citizens were similar to those of American settlers elsewhere in the Westward Movement. Settlers occupied land and used resources they did not own virtually everywhere. They also used various means to preserve land and resources for original settlers and prevent their acquisition by subsequent arrivers, speculators, and claim jumpers.
It is deplorable that Utah criminals took the law into their own hands in a number of cases. These include the violent attacks on many of Burr’s employees and the murders of Ralph Pike and J. King Robinson.
Nevertheless, it is also true that the Utahns told the truth about the activities of Burr and his deputies. The fraudulent surveys cheated the federal government and clouded Utah land titles. It required a series of post-Utah War investigations to substantiate that fact and to begin to correct the frauds. Unlike the allegations of Brigham Young’s approval of the Potter-Parrish murders, the investigations revealed no reasonable doubt of the fraudulence of these surveys.
The question remains why would someone with a sterling career as a cartographer sanction such activity? Some possibilities seem relevant. Burr had experience as a cartographer rather than as a land surveyor. This was his first experience as a surveyor general. Cartographers can map the land with an alidade, plane table, and stadia board. These tools are sufficient for maps but not accurate enough for land surveys. In fact, in September 1855, shortly after he arrived in Utah, perhaps failing to understand the need for a higher degree of accuracy, Burr asked permission to use a geodetic technique, as a cartographer might, rather than the rectangular system, as required in land surveys. The GLO denied his request. 77 Perhaps age contributed to Burr’s failings since at age 52 when he came to Utah, Burr was already an old man. Life expectancy in 1850 was only 38.3 years.78 Whatever the cause, Burr and his deputies cost the treasury a great deal of money and the people of Utah considerable inconvenience and expense as well.
NOTES
Thomas G. Alexander is the Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Western American History at Brigham Young University and a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society. I appreciate the assistance of William P. MacKinnon, the comments of W. Paul Reeve, and the critique of three anonymous reviewers.
1 Because of the generally negative connotation of the terms Mormon and Mormonism in the nineteenth century, because of the frequent argument from the assumption of Mormon exceptionalism, and because problems in Utah were similar to those found elsewhere, I have frequently used the terms Utah and Utahns.
2 On public lands see: Paul W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development (Washington, D. C.: GPO, 1968); Thomas G. Alexander, A Clash of Interests: Interior Department and Mountain West, 1863-1890 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1977), 7-8, and chapters 3, 6, and 9; Dean L. May, Three Frontiers: Family, Land and Society in the American West, 1850-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Land Office Business: The Settlementand Administration of American Public Lands, 17891837 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).
3 Gates, History of Public Land Law, 440-43
4 F. H. Newell, Report on Agriculture by Irrigation in the Western Part of the United States (Washington, D. C.: GPO, 1894), vii, 1-5. See also Gustive O. Larson, “Land Contest in Early Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 29 (October 1961): 317; and George Thomas, The Development of Institutions Under Irrigation: With Special Reference to UtahConditions (New York: Macmillan, 1920).
5 14 U. S. Statutes at Large 541 (March 2, 1867) and 16 Statutes at Large 183 (July 1, 1870).
6 Congressional Globe, 40th Cong., 2nd Sess., June 3, 1868, 2813-14; Larson, “Land Contest,” 323; 15 U. S. Statutes at Large 91 (July 16, 1868).
7 14 U. S. Statutes at Large 77 (June 27, 1866), and 14 U. S. Statutes at Large 542 (March 2, 1867).
8 On the disputes that led to the Utah war see: Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002); David L. Bigler, Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896 (Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1998); John Gary Maxwell, Gettysburg to Great Salt Lake: George R. Maxwell, Civil War Hero and Federal Marshal among the Mormons (Norman: Arthur H. Clark, University of Oklahoma Press, 2010); Norman L. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); Donald R. Moorman and Gene A. Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mormons: The Utah War (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992); William P. MacKinnon, At Swords Point: Part 1, A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858 (Norman: Arthur H. Clark, University of Oklahoma Press, 2008); Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1950); Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958); and Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
9 Wilford Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal ed. Scott G. Kinney 9 Vols. (Midvale: Signature Books, 1983-1985), 3:236. See also Larson, “Land Contest,” 310; and Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom,46.
10 Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox & Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation among the Mormons (2nd ed.; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 63-78; Jeffery O. Johnson, “Was Being a Probate Judge in Pioneer Utah a Church Calling?” Paper presented at the Mormon History Association Conference, Casper, Wyoming, May 27, 2006.
11 Larson, “Land Contest,” 312-13.
12 Gates, History of Public Land Law, 236-37.
13 Milton R. Hunter, Brigham Young, the Colonizer (Independence, MO: Zion’s Printing and Publishing, 1945), 147; Dean L. May, A People’s History of Utah (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), 116; Robert A. Sauder, “State Versus Society: Public Land Law and Mormon Settlement in the Sevier Valley Utah,” Agricultural History 70 (Winter 1996): 57-89.
14 For example: Larson, “Land Contest,” 313. See also Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 53-54.
15 James Buchanan, Second Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, December 6, 1858, in http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29499 (Accessed January 10, 2011); Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah, 1540-1886, The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 26 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1889), 485.
16 For Indian land conflicts see W. Paul Reeve, Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, and Southern Paiutes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
17 Maxwell, Gettysburg to Great Salt Lake, 120.
18 Ibid.; Caleb B. Smith to Commissioner, General Lane Office (hereinafter GLO), August 27, 1861, Department of the Interior (hereinafter: ID), Lands Letterbook, No. 7 (hereinafter: Lands, No. 7), Records Group (hereinafter RG) 48, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D. C. (hereinafter DNA); MacKinnon, ed. At Sword’s Point, Part I, 66 identifies Joseph Troskowlawski as one of the surveyors, I have, however, used David Burr’s spelling—Troskolawski.
19 For a reproduction of the 1855 surveying instructions see C. Albert White, A History of the Rectangular Survey System (Washington, D. C.: Bureau of Reclamation, Department of the Interior, 1983), 457-500, especially 461-63 for dimensions of the various markers.
20 MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 110. For the affidavits see: Acting Commissioner of the General Land Office to Samuel C. Stambaugh, June 22, 1869, GLO, Correspondence of the Surveyors General of Utah, 1854-1916 (Hereinafter: Correspondence, Utah), DNA, RG 49, M1110, Roll 48.
21 Burr to G. C. Whiting, September 30, 1855, with attachment, House Executive Document 71, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., (hereinafter HED 71), 123-24.
22 David H. Burr to Thomas A. Hendricks, February 5, 1857, HED 71, 118.
23 David H. Burr to Thomas A. Hendricks, August 30, 1856, HED 71,114-15. Andrew Jenson, ed. Church Chronology: A Record of Important Events . . . 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1914), 92.
24 C. L. Craig to David H. Burr, August 1, 1856, HED 71, 116-17.
25 Ibid., 117.
26 Charles W. Moeller to editor, St. Louis Republican, June 26, 1857, New York Times, July 27, 1857. C. Albert White, Initial Points of the Rectangular Survey System (Westminster, CO: Publishing House, 1996), 320-21, 324.
27 Statement of David H. Burr to Attorney General Jeremiah Black, delivered March 20, 1857, by John F. Kinney, Records Relating to the Appointment of Federal Judges, Attorneys and Marshals for the Territory and State of Utah, 1853-1901, Pierce’s Administration, 1853-57, RG 60, DNA, Microfilm 680, Reel 1.
28 Burr to Hendricks, March 28, 1857, HED 71, 118-20. Compare Polly Aird, “‘You Nasty Apostates, Clear Out’: Reasons for Disaffection in the Late 1850s,” Journal of Mormon History 30 (Fall 2004): 129-207
29 Polly Aird, “‘You Nasty Apostates,” 173-91. Polly Aird and William MacKinnon have disagreed with my use of reasonable doubt.
30 On Blood Atonement, see MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part I, 54; On Potter-Parrish see Aird, “You Nasty Apostates,” 173-91. One of the reviewers of this paper called Young’s list a “hit list,” but there is no evidence that it was anything other than a request for information since the cover letter to Bernhisel says that that is what it was.
31 Burr to Hendricks, June 11, 1857, HED 71, 120-21.
32 Burr to Hendricks, October 19, 1857, C. G. Landon to David H. Burr, September 18, 1857, HED 71, 121-28; William Bell to David H. Burr, March 1, 1858, White, Initial Points, 323.
33 Burr to Hendricks, September 20, 1856, and Landon to Burr, September 18, 1857, HED 71, 117-18, 122-23; MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part I, 471-474; Clinton v. Englebrecht, 80 U. S. 434 (1874).
34 Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young, American Moses (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1985), 5, 65, 250.
35 Scott K. Thomas, “Violence Across the Land: Vigilantism and Extra Legal Justice in Utah Territory,” (M. A. Thesis, Brigham Young University, 2010).
36 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 50-51, 54. Arrington quotes A. L. Neff, History of Utah, 1847 to 1869 (Salt Lake City, 1940), 255.
37 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 90-91.
38 Brigham Young to John M. Bernhisel, n.d. in Larson, “Land Contest,” 315-16.
39 Brigham Young to George A. Smith, John Taylor, and John M. Bernhisel, January 3, 1857, MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 66.
40 White, Initial Points, 311-12.
41 New York Herald, May 24, 1857.
42 Acting Commissioner to Samuel C. Stambaugh, June 22, 1859, GLO, Utah Surveyor General, DNA, RG 49, M1110, Roll 48; White, Initial Points, 320-21, 324.
43 On Burr and the Utah War see, Bigler, Forgotten Kingdom, 55. The 1893 appointee was Charles C. Richards, a son of LDS Apostle George F. Richards.
44 On judges and the Utah War see, Thomas G. Alexander, “Carpetbaggers, Reprobates, and Liars: Federal Judges and the Utah War,” The Historian 70 (Summer 2008): 209-38. On Burr being placed on leave see William MacKinnon to Thomas Alexander, April 8, 2011, copy in the author’s possession.
45 On stone monuments, see Willis Drummond to C. C. Clements, April 21, 1873, GLO, Utah Letter Book, No. 1, RG 49, DNA, Washington, D. C.
46 On Stambaugh’s work, see J. M. Edmunds, Commissioner of the GLO to Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior for 1861 in http://cprr.org/Museum/Land_Office_1861.html (Accessed: July 27, 2010)
The GLO ordinarily allowed $15 per mile for standard lines, $12 per mile for township lines, and $10 per mile for section and quarter-section lines. See Willis Drummond to C. C. Clements, April 21, 1873, GLO, Utah Letter Book No. 1, RG 49, DNA, Washington, D. C. Burr, however, allowed rates as high as $20 per mile. White, Initial Points, 312.
47 See Mogo to Thomas A. Hendricks, attachment in Acting Commissioner to Stambaugh, June 22, 1859, GLO, Utah Surveyors General, RG 49, DNA, M1110, Roll 48.
48 Caleb B. Smith to J. M. Edmunds, August 27, 1861, GLO, Utah Surveyors General, RG 49, M1110, Roll 48; John P. Usher to J. M. Edmunds, August 1, 1862, ID, Lands 7, RG 48, DNA.
49 Joseph S. Wilson to Stambaugh, February 18, 1860, GLO, Utah Surveyors General, RG 49, DNA, M1110, Roll 48.
50 Wilson to Stambaugh, December 19, 1860, GLO, Utah Surveyors General, RG 49, DNA, M1110, Roll 48.
51 J. M. Edmunds to Stambaugh, April 9, and May 29, 1861, and Edmunds to Samuel R. Fox, August 15, 1861, GLO, Utah Surveyor’s General RG 49, M1110, Roll 48.
52 J. M. Edmunds to Samuel R. Fox, April 14, 1862, GLO, Utah Surveyors General Letter Book No. 1, pp. 237-38, RG 49, DNA.
53 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1863, Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office (J. M. Edmunds), 57; Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1865, Report of the General Land Office, John Pierce, Report of the Surveyor General of Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, 103; George A. Smith, John Taylor, Charles Turkee, Memorial of the Utah Legislature Approved January 27, 1868, House Miscellaneous Document 71, 40th Cong., 2nd Sess., Serial Set 1349; Deseret News, December 3, 1867, in Journal History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, MS, Archives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah (Hereinafter JH); Deseret News, January 1, 1868, in JH.
54 Deseret News, January 1, 1868, in JH.
55 John A. Clark to Joseph S. Wilson, May 26, 1869, GLO, letters received (H65521), RG 49, DNA.
56 John A. Clark to Joseph S. Wilson, January 20, 1869, GLO, letters received (H53162), RG 49, DNA.
57 Clark to Wilson, January 20, 1869, GLO, letters received (H53162), RG 49, DNA.
58 White, Initial Points, 326-27.
59 Joseph S. Wilson to John A. Clark, February 25, 1869, GLO, Utah Letter Book No. 1, RG 49, DNA.
60 Joseph S. Wilson to John A. Clark, January 29, 1869, GLO, Utah Letter Book No. 1, pp. 271-72, RG 49, DNA.
61 George A. Smith, Orson Pratt, and Edwin Higgins, Memorial, February 15, 1869, House Miscellaneous Document 21, 41st Cong., 1st Session, Serial Set 1402.
62 Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, lst Session, March 22, 1869, p. 196.
63 For appropriations for Utah, see Alexander, Clash of Interests, Table 3, p. 187.
64 W. W. Curtis to C. C. Clements, April 10, 1872, GLO, Utah Letter Book No. 1, p. 384, RG 49, DNA, Washington, D. C.
65 C. C. Clements to Willis Drummond, April 17, 1872, GLO, letters received (I93141), RG 49, DNA; W. W. Curtis to Fred Chase, April 10, 1872, Utah Letter Book, No. 1, pp. 385-88, RG 49, DNA.
66 The plat maps for these surveys are on line in the Bureau of Land Management web site.
67 Willis Drummond to C. C. Clements, April 21, 1873, GLO, Utah Letter Book, No. 1, RG 49, DNA.
68 C. C. Clements to Joseph S. Wilson, March 28, 1870 (H97037), GLO, letters received, DNA; Wilson to Clements, April 14, 1870, Utah Letter Book No 1, p. 311, RG 49, DNA.
69 Maxwell, Gettysburg to Great Salt Lake, 272; S. S. Burdett to Nathan Kimball, July 30, 1875, GLO, Utah Letter Book No 2, RG 49, DNA; Nathan Kimball, “Report of the Surveyor General of Utah” in Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1874, 156, ibid. 1875, 250.
70 Nathan Kimball to Willis Drummond, February 18, 1874 (K87352), GLO, letters received, RG 49, DNA.
71 Nathan Kimball in Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1876, p. 278.
72 John Wasson to J. A. Williamson, July 17, 1877, GLO, letters received (M79081), RG 49, DNA.
73 Gates, History of Public Land Law, 639-40.
74 Ibid., 512-16.
75 Moorman and Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mormons, 253-56.
76 Robert N. Baskin, Reminiscences of Early Utah (Salt Lake City: Privately Printed, 1914), 13-16.
77 Thomas A. Hendricks to David H. Burr, November 19, 1855, Correspondence, Utah), DNA, RG 49, M1110, Roll 48.
78 On life expectancy see: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html.
