The Great Seattle Land Grab: How the Maynard Donation Claim Stalled City Growth

We devote our first page today to the matter of J. A. Williamson, Commissioner of the U.S. Land Office, in the matter of the Catherine Maynard Donation Land Claim in the southwestern portion of this city. It will be remembered that the litigation was first opened a few years ago by the suit of Lydia Maynard and her heirs, which resulted adversely to the plaintiffs but succeeded in breaking the title of Catherine Maynard to whom the certificate had issued. The Valentine scrip was some species of floatable land scrip (known as Sioux City) issued by the government and held by James R. Valentine, of San Francisco, which enabled him to locate the number of acres called for on any public lands not appropriated. It will be observed that on account of the withdrawal of the city limits north of the line of sections eight and nine, his filing held one lot of about seventeen acres. The ground of the decision was the isolation of the most of the lands in question, something over 300 acres within the corporate limits of the city of Seattle, the pre-emption law expressly exempting lands within the incorporation of any town or city from the purview of that statute. The best of the decision, though, is that the commissioner would not recognize any right of the city as having enured in the absence of any real improvements. It will be necessary to fulfill the spirit of the law by occupation and improvement. If the town-site law is held to apply in this case, any citizen can pre-empt a homestead of one or more lots at the nominal price of ten dollars each by making substantial improvements on each lot taken.