Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

In force, Mar.[March] 2, 1839.

AN ACT for the relief of William Hick and Timothy Guard.
1

Preamble.

Whereas, by the act of the sixteenth of January, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, entitled “An act relating to the Gallatin saline, and the lands belonging to the same,” a pre-emption right to a part of the fraction of land on which the said Timothy Guard’s furnace stood, not exceeding four acres, was granted to him at fifty cents per acre, for the purpose of erecting thereon a steam-mill: and whereas the said Guard and William Hick, the present proprietors of said four acres have, in the erection of a large steam-mill on said tract, placed the same a few feet over the line of a correct survey of said pre-emption tract, on land belonging to the State, being misled, as they represent, by the late county surveyor of Gallatin county: and whereas the said four acres were laid off by said former surveyor upon a line running parallel with the Saline creek, without reaching to low-water mark of said creek: Therefore,

May surrender patent.

Proviso.

Sec.[Section] 1. Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly, That it shall be lawful for the said Guard and Hick to surrender the patent held by them for the said four acres to which a pre-emption right was granted by the act aforesaid to said Guard, and to resurvey and relocate their said four acres, so that the same shall extend to low-water mark of the Saline creek, and include their said mill: Provided, That the line of said new survey shall not extend more than seventy-five feet west of the west line of said mill, and shall not run north further than the former survey of said four acres, as laid off by said former county surveyor.

Com’r[Commissioner] to give certificate of purchase.

Sec. 2. It shall be the duty of the commissioner of sales of saline lands in Gallatin county to receive the report of the present surveyor of the new location of said four acres, and to grant a certificate of purchase to the said Guard and Hick for the new survey of said four acres; and on the return of the same, with the patent which had issued for the said land as formerly surveyed, it shall be the duty of the Auditor to cancel said former patent, and cause a new patent to issue to the said Guard and Hick for the said four acres as located under this act.

Approved, March 2, 1839.

1On February 18, 1839, William J. Gatewood introduced SB 227 in the Senate. On February 23, the Senate passed the bill without amendment, and referred it to the House. On March 2, the House passed the bill without amendment. That same day, theCouncil of Revision approved the bill, and the act became law.
Journal of the House of Representatives, at the First Session of the Tenth General Assembly, of the State of Illinois (Vandalia, IL: William Waters, 1836), 493, 592; Journal of the Senate, at the First Session of the Tenth General Assembly, of the State of Illinois (Vandalia, IL: William Waters, 1836), 344, 348, 392, 471, 502, 510, 512.