Format:
1 Online-Ressource (11 pages)
Series Statement:
Senate No. 28
Content:
On February 21, 1835, the Committee on Public Lands responded to the Land Agent's report with its own report: It was hardly believable that such an immense domain was in the hands of one man, but he had done a wonderful job and was not even bonded. Coffin had asked for a Board of Commissioners to help him, but the Committee basically admitted it had no idea what Coffin did, so it didn't know what to ask Commissioners to do. It asked questions of Coffin about the extent, condition, and productivity of the public lands and came to a Resolve: One Senator and two Representatives would be a committee to personally look at the laws and the condition of the land to develop a system of management. The Governor was to pay the committee's expenses. Attachment A was the 1834 report of the Land Agent [see 52533 and 52566 for descriptions] Attachment B was Coffin's response to the Committee's questions: List of the Massachusetts acres from 1822-1827 as set aside by the Act of Separation of Maine, townships surveyed in 1833, half for Massachusetts, an estimate of the acres held by the British, unsold Massachusetts townships, number of acres sold since separation, number of acres granted to institutions, number of acres for soldiers, money received for timber and hay. There followed several paragraphs about the value of the land, and the expense of making it available, such as surveying and road building. He estimated that expense as just over 8% of the amount of sales. Finally, he estimated the number of acres Massachusetts might have under various settlements of the international boundary
Language:
English
