- Collection:
- Ad Hoc Collection
- Title:
- Yazoo Land Receipt from the Georgia Company
- Date of Original:
- 1795-10-17
- Subject:
- Land use--Georgia--History--18th century
Receipts (Acknowledgments)--Georgia
Yazoo Fraud, 1795 - Location:
- United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
- Medium:
- documents
- Type:
- Text
- Format:
- image/jpeg
- Description:
- Receipt for $200,000 from the Georgia Company, one of the companies to successfully bid on the Yazoo lands (not to be mistaken with the Georgia Union Company) for the balance of their purchase, according to the act appropriating a part of the "Unlocated Territory." The Yazoo Land Act was destroyed along with nearly all related records in February 1796, but the act's major features are incorporated in this receipt.
The western boundary of Georgia originally extended to the Mississippi River. In 1794 the state legislature agreed to consider proposals for the sale of the western or Yazoo lands to private land companies. Four companies pushed through a bid of $500,000 for 35,000,000 acres in present-day Alabama and Mississippi while a bid which reached $800,000 with a $40,000 deposit in hard currency from the Georgia Union Company was ignored. Passage of the bill was secured by bribes of money and land to legislators, state officials, and newspaper editors, who were also shareholders in the land companies. The bill's supporters were voted out of office and in February 1796 the bill was rescinded by a reform legislature. Three days after the passage of the Rescinding Act, all but a handful of records of the bill and land sales were burned in front of the State Capitol in Louisville. The western territory and Yazoo claims were transferred to the federal government for $1.25 million in 1802. - Metadata URL:
- https://vault.georgiaarchives.org/digital/collection/adhoc/id/991
- Rights Holder:
- Users may download the images for personal or educational use
- Original Collection:
- Ad Hoc Collection
Yazoo Land Fraud Records, General Administrative Records, Surveyor General, RG 3-1-69, Georgia Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia Archives
- Rights:
-
