With the entrance of Missouri as a slave state, a tide of emigrants from Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois, most of whom were wealthy and educated slaveholders, restored the credit of the state by buying the lands of the territory that had been struck off for taxes and other debts.
Security to the early settlers was blue smoke curling up from the chimney of their log house, a plot of land cleared that was surrounded by a worn fence and large enough to produce food for the family.
These things he could provide by the use of the ax and many long hours of hard labor. But then, lack of a clear title to the land hanged like a dark cloud over his labors.
In 1785, an act providing for rectangular land survey was passed by the United States Congress to replace the old system of meets and bounds measurement. The rectangular method of survey established a north-south line called a "prime meridian" which was intersected at right angles by an east-west "base line." These lines were extended at six mile intervals with the east-west lines being numbered "Range" lines and the north-south lines becoming "Township lines."
To control the recording of title to and sale of lands, the United States Congress set up land offices in central cities, often a considerable distance from outlying farms. The first price established was $2.00 per acre with one-fourth down payment required, but by the time land could be sold in the Riverways area, so many had defaulted on their payments that the price had to be lowered to $1.25 per acre with no credit.
The admission of Missouri to statehood was the answer to many of the problems of the new settlers of the Riverways. But for those pioneer settlers who, with each new generation, had plunged, hopefully, westward toward new lands to open them for settlement, this was not so. Statehood was bringing too many people to this land along the Riverways. The fertile plains, was to be had for the taking. Neighbors were nice, thought the range settlers, only so long as they remained far enough away that their fences, governments and recorded land titles did not become an annoyance.
Some range settlers stayed, eventually to become a part of the southern Missouri communities; others, having no wish to join the new settlers, could, as allowed by the preemption law, sell their cabins and improvements even though there were no proven titles to the properties, and again move westward to the open range.
The field notes of the surveys noted the person living on the land at the time of the survey and all improvements accomplished by him; he was then allowed to claim up to 640 acres, if improved. The land office controlling ownership of land in this area was established at Jackson, Missouri, a town which was located one hundred miles due east. In 1821, when the survey was completed, Jackson consisted of three hundred persons living in fifty log houses.
Four foot by four foot cloth maps of the original township surveys were made and the information of the surveys was noted on the maps and hung in the land offices. Subsequently, the squatter, by going to the land office, could determine the numbers of his land and formally claim it by having his name written across the land numbers of the map.
If ownership changed, the original name was erased and the new owner's name was shown.
The change from the description of land by meets and bounds to the new rectangular system was difficult for the people who had taken up land as squatters or under tribal law, not only because the mode of measurement was unfamiliar but because it necessitated a trip to the land office and the payment of taxes each year. This being the case, many people did not claim their land.