Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

In force, Jan.[January] 18, 1838.

AN ACT to vacate the plat of the town of Peru, in the county of McLean.
1
Sec.[Section] 1. Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly, That the entire plat of the town of Peru, in the county of McLean, as originally laid off and recorded, is hereby declared to be vacated. This act to be in force from and after its passage.2

[ certification ]
01/18/1839
Field, Alexander P.

This bill having remained with the Council of Revision ten days, and the General Assembly being in session, it has become a law this eighteenth day of January, 1839.
A. P. FIELD, Secretary of State.

1John Moore introduced HB 1 in the House of Representatives on December 8, 1838. The House passed it on December 19. On December 24, it passed the Senate. The Council of Revision neither approved the bill nor returned it with objections before the end of the session, and the bill automatically became law on January 18, 1839, at the next session of the General Assembly.
Illinois House Journal. 1838. 11th G. A., 1st sess., 50, 54, 114, 143, 164, 175; Illinois Senate Journal. 1838. 11th G. A., 1st sess., 94, 98, 104, 106, 136.

2Illinois experienced a time of intense land speculation in the 1830s that resulted in a number of “paper towns,” settlements that were platted and available for sale but where few or no people actually lived. Many of the proprietors of these settlements abandoned them during and after the Panic of 1837. As a result, the General Assembly received a large number of petitions for vacation during their sessions from 1838 to 1841. In 1841, the legislature passed an act setting parameters for proprietors to vacate town plats themselves. Vacating a plat gave owners greater flexibility in the use, fencing, and sale of the property.
An Act to Vacate Town Plats; Alasdair Roberts, America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the Panic of 1837 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 19, 33, 38; James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 210-11; Robert P. Howard, Illinois: A History of the Prairie State (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1972), 196.