Land Warrant to Abraham Lincoln, 22 April 18561
120UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.120
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
Office of the Commissioner of Pensions.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
Office of the Commissioner of Pensions.
It is hereby Certified, that under the Act of March 3rd 1855, entitled “An Act in addition to certain Acts granting Bounty Land to certain
Officers and Soldiers who have been engaged in THE MILITARY SERVICE of the United States,”
BOUNTY LAND
120 ACRES
120 ACRES
is entitled to locate One Hundred and Twenty Acres at any land office of the United
States, in one body, and in conformity to the legal subdivisions of the public lands
upon any of the public lands subject to sale at either the minimum or lower graduated
prices.3 Given under my Hand and the Seal of the Department this 22d day of April 1856
| D. T. Jenks Toppan, Carpenter & Co Philada & New York. | No 68,645 | J. MinotCommissioner |
Note. You can locate this Certificate at any of the United States land offices, or
it will be located for you by the General Land Office on the return of it, with your request to that effect endorsed therein, specifying
the State and Land District in which you wish the location made. If you locate it,
fill up and sign the following application.
| To the Register of the Land Office at 157 [98] 18[?] |
Locate this Certificate in the quarter of section in Township of Range Attest Register |
3At the outbreak of the Black Hawk War, Lincoln volunteered for the Illinois State Militia. On April 21, 1832, Lincoln and other men from the New Salem area were mustered into a company in the Fourth Regiment of Illinois Mounted Volunteers, and the members of the company elected Lincoln as their captain. When his month
of service ended, Lincoln re-enlisted twice, for twenty and thirty days respectively,
serving as a private both times. He was finally discharged on July 10, 1832.
On September 28, 1850, the U.S. Congress passed an act granting certain groups who had served in the United States military
during the War of 1812, any of “the Indian wars” since 1790, and the Mexican War parcels of public land. Per this act, the amount of land that veterans (or their
legal heirs) were entitled to depended upon the length of engagement and actual time
served. Lincoln was entitled to forty acres of public land for the time he served
as captain of the Fourth Regiment of Illinois Mounted Volunteers. He was issued that land on June 1, 1855.
Lincoln received these 120 acres of land for his service during the Black Hawk War
following the passage of the March 3, 1855, federal law declaring that all who had
served in any U.S. war since 1790 were entitled to 160 acres of land in total. These
120 acres, added to the forty acres he had been issued in 1855, fulfilled the requirement
of the new law. This new land was located in Crawford County, Iowa, 144 miles west of his original forty acres. There is no evidence that Lincoln ever
received any revenue from any of these bounty lands. After his assassination, since
he did not leave a will, the initial forty acres of land passed in one-third equal
divisions to Mary Lincoln, Robert T. Lincoln, and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln. The Crawford County land also passed to the remaining Lincoln family.
Muster Roll of Abraham Lincoln’s Company of Mounted Volunteers; Muster Roll of Captain Elijah Iles’ Company of Mounted Volunteers; Muster Roll of Captain Jacob M. Early’s Company of Mounted Volunteers; Ellen M. Whitney, comp., The Black Hawk War, 1831-1832: Illinois Volunteers, vol. 35 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1970), 1:176-78, 227-30, 544-46;
“An Act Granting Bounty Land to Certain Officers and Soldiers Who Have Been Engaged
in the Military Service of the United States,” 28 September 1850, Statutes at Large of the United States 9 (1862):520-21; Certification of Land Warrant for Abraham Lincoln’s Black Hawk War Service; Certification of Land Warrant to Abraham Lincoln; Land Warrant to Abraham Lincoln; Land Patent of the United States to Abraham Lincoln; “An Act in Addition to Certain Acts Granting Bounty Land to Certain Officers and
Soldiers Who Have Been Engaged in the Military Service of the United States,” 3 March
1855, Statutes at Large of the United States 10 (1855):701-2; Harry E. Pratt, The Personal Finances of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1943), 67-69.
Partially Printed Document Signed, 1 page(s), U.S. Department of the Interior Museum (Washington, DC).