User:BaronLarf/Carver's Tract

Map 8 shows Wisconsin Territory as organized in 1836. That which is labeled as "Carver's Tract" had been (supposedly) deeded to surveyor/mapmaker Captain Jonathan Carver by two chiefs of the Sioux nation in 1767, although Carver himself never wrote about the deed. Such a land grant from Native Americans to an Englishman was forbidden at the time by royal decree, but Carver's heirs and their associates continued to press for ownership rights for some time. Map 7 labels the area as "New York Mississippi Land Co's Tract" followed by "Commonly called Carver's Tract."

CARVER'S TRACT an extensive tract of country in Wisconsin territory lying on the Mississippi from the mouth of Chippe way river to the falls of St Anthony extending eastward to about the 13th deg W Longitude from Washington Said tract was purchased pf the Indians by Jonathan Carver in the year 1767 and is now held as individual property The Chippeway river has its whole course in it and is navigable for boats 200 miles It is near this stream that the celebrated Chippeway pineries are situated a d numerous saw mills are erected to improve the advantages offered by a profitable lumber trade down the Mississippi This tract is included in Crawford county and contain both timber and prairie land A History and New Gazetteer Or Geographical Dictionary, of North America and the West Indies By Bishop Davenport

CARVER'S GRANT THE maps of the United States for nearly half a century until within a short time past had in the delineations of this quarter of the country always marked upon them certain lines embracing a large district of territory and denominated as Carver's Tract Immediately on the organization of the Territory of Wisconsin a new edition of Carver's Travels in the Interior of North America was published in New York under the title of Carver's Travels in Wisconsin The last English edition of this work was published in 1781 and the new American edition of 1838 contained besides its new title an extended statement of the claims of the representatives of Captain Jonathan Carver to the tract of country alluded to but did not set forth in any manner or by any allusion thereto the action of the Congress of the United States on the subject of Carver's Claim The continued delineations on the maps of the United States of such an unacknowledged claim and the republication of an old work with a new title setting forth such claims in an ex parte statement and exhibiting the same to the world of speculation at an auspicious time are matters intended to deceive the ignorant and unwary who might be inclined to make purchases of land in this region of country The originators of such schemes perhaps are only known to map makers and persons who caused the publication of Carver's Title in the new edition of his book of travels one matter is absolutely certain that in Carver's Travels as published by himself in his lifetime accompanied with a map of this part of the country drawn by himself there is not a single word said nor is there a solitary hint given or line drawn on his map to lead any one to believe or even conjecture that such a grant ever had been made to him The existence of the claim in the hands of Carver's representatives since his death and the attempts which have been made to induce the Congress of the United States either to confirm the Indian grant or to compensate its supposed owners for the loss of the land have given the subject an importance sufficient to entitle it to a full investigation and a place in the annals of Wisconsin Jonathan Carver was a native of Connecticut born in 1762 and having in early life entered the British army as an en  The History of Wisconsin  By William Rudolph Smith The History of Wisconsin By William Rudolph Smith

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Term: Carver Grant Definition: a hypothetical tract of land that would have included much of northwestern Wisconsin.

British soldier Jonathan Carver (q.v.) in 1766 was assigned to map the main rivers of Wisconsin and Minnesota in preparation for an expedition to search for an overland Northwest passage. Carver traveled the Fox-Wisconsin route, then up the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers to a point west of the Falls of St. Anthony, where he wintered with the Sioux Indians. In 1767 he started with the party sent by Robert Rogers to find a route to the Pacific but they went as far as Grand Portage on Lake Superior, where they were forced to turn back for lack of supplies. In 1769 he went to London, collected his pay and expenses, and published his popular memoir of his adventures, Travels through the Interior Parts of North America (1778). After Carver's death, the editor of the third edition of his travels claimed that he had in his possession a deed, signed by two chiefs of the Sioux, giving Carver title to about 10,000 square miles in the upper Mississippi Valley. The deed could not be located after the death of Carver's widow.

About 1804, a group of descendants of Carver petitioned the U.S. Congress for ownership rights to a large tract of land in Wisconsin and Minnesota, claiming that the deed supposedly dated at the "Great Cave, May the 1st, 1767" entitled Carver and his family to "the whole of a certain tract or territory of land, bounded as follows, viz.: from the Falls of St. Anthony, running on the east bank of the Mississippi, nearly southeast, as far as Lake Pepin, where the Chippewa joins the Mississippi, and from thence eastward, five days travel, accounting twenty English miles per day, and from thence again to the Falls of St. Anthony, on a direct straight line." This triangular tract in northwestern Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota would have been bounded by lines running from modern Minneapolis southeast to Pepin, then due east to near Stevens Point, and from there northwest roughly through Eau Claire to Minneapolis.

Congress investigated their claim and ultimately concluded that English law at the time prohibited any land grants to individuals, that Carver himself never made any mention of such a grant in his book or afterwards, and that no Indians in the region had any knowledge of such a transaction having been made by their grandparents' generation; in 1817, Sioux elders in St. Paul had even told Carver's heirs that no chiefs with the names on the deed had ever existed. Congress concluded, therefore, on Jan. 29, 1823, not to permit Carver's heirs the rights to this land in Wisconsin. Speculators nevertheless continued to promote the sale of portions of "Carver's Grant" for another half century.

Modern scholars who have reviewed all the evidence cannot confirm the existence of any such grant to Carver, who never mentioned it in surviving records. They have, however, documented a great deal of deceit, manipulation, and self-delusion by his heirs and their agents as they attempted to sell portions of the land in the decades following his death.

View more information elsewhere at wisconsinhistory.org

View a related article at Wisconsin Historical Collections. [Source: Journals of Jonathan Carver (St. Paul, 1976): 47-51; Middlebrook, Samuel. "Samuel Peters." New England Quarterly, 20/1 (1947): 75-87; Quaife, Milo. "Jonathan Carver and the Carver Grant." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 7/1 (1920): 3-25.]

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