Forum: Author Hangout

Research for a story I'm working on. Unfortunately, my googling hasn't really found me many answers, so I'm asking here in the hope that you folks who sat through American History at high-school know the answers and what keywords I should google for!

So, in mid-late 1600s many indentured servants didn't get land when they finished their indenture. They just moved up to the frontier and 'squatted'.

My question is: what happened to them eventually? Did they ever acquire the rights to the land they tilled? If so, how? If not, where did they end up?

The doctrine of adverse possession of real property is a strange legal concept, yet one deeply imbedded in American law. Under this doctrine, a person who trespasses onto and possesses the property of another can, after enough time has passed and if certain other conditions are met, become the legal owner of the property.

https://www.racinelaw.net/blog/strange-doctrine-adverse-possession-origins/

As described in the referenced article, possession and use of the land as if you are the owner of the land for a given period of time gave your squatters a legal claim to gain title to the land.

I doubt they considered their rights under this doctrine. It is more likely that they just claimed and used the land and no one objected. So over a period of years, the people who squatted on neighboring sections of land came to recognize them as the owners of the land, and there was never a challenge to their ownership of the land.

So, in mid-late 1600s many indentured servants didn't get land when they finished their indenture. They just moved up to the frontier and 'squatted'.

My question is: what happened to them eventually? Did they ever acquire the rights to the land they tilled? If so, how? If not, where did they end up?

All you have to do is look at my state and what people are called here - Sooners. That came from when it was decided to open the state up to people, and some people crossed the line ahead of, or 'sooner' than legal.

From your story perspective, you're dealing with people that moved to the frontier into what was considered unclaimed territory. If the land they squatted on wasn't claimed by anyone (and sometimes even if it was), then they'd build their cabin / hovel and start farming. The old saying that possession is 9/10ths of the law is relevant here.

That's how a LOT of small towns in America got started. It'd go from Frank's land to Franklin, Brooks Town to Brookston, etc. While the land at that time was all claimed by the Crown (you're in pre-Revolutionary war times), realistically so long as the new settlers continued to plead fealty to the Crown, they were left alone.

And if they weren't, then they either moved further west or moved six feet down.

Ah, "sooner" is another term I can google :). Thx

So there wasn't any kind of effort to register everyone and make it official in 1700s or anything like that?

I think the squatters revolted and marched in Jamestown? But did that give them rights to the land they squatted?

From the legal aspect you need to look at 3 sets of laws. The first is from the establishment of the colony up to the winning of the Revolutionary War the British laws on Squatter's Rights apply as well as the appropriate laws by the Virginian Colonial Government, then the relevant laws on Squatter's Right under the new Virginian State Government, and the last is from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 covering all land west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Upper Mississippi River to the Federal Government which established the concept of fee simple ownership, by which ownership was in perpetuity with unlimited power to sell or give it away.