1804.065: Petition concerning Claims of the Indiana Company.
Published: 1804
Full Title: Petition to the honourable the General Assembly ... inhabitants of the counties of Monongalia, Ohio, Harrison, Randolph and Wood ...
Author: Inhabitants of Western Virginia Counties.
Place Issued: Virginia
Issuing Press: Uncertain
Description: 1 sheet [1 pg.]; 32 cm. x 19 cm. (broadside).
Notes
Petitioners ask the General Assembly to intercede in suits filed in the state's courts against those settlers in the west who held disputed titles to land originally granted to the Indiana Company in the 1760s; the company sought rents and taxes from those lands despite the grant of titles to them by the new Commonwealth after the war; the Assembly declined to act, leaving the matter to Congress (as an issue under the 1783 Treaty of Paris) but voiced support for the embattled settlers. Sheet lacks colophon; petition was entered into consideration in the House of Delegates on December 6, 1804; at that time, the only press operating west of the Alleghany ridge was that of Joseph Campbell and Forbes Britton in Morgantown; however, contemporary records and modern scholarship indicate that signatures were collected on manuscript petitions, and that this title was a printed cover for those signatures when they were submitted; as it is likely that this sheet was produced somewhere east of the ridge, so the indeterminacy here.