but it was upon the presumption that there were no unmarried women in Oregon, which was near the truth. Men took advantage of the law, and to be able to lord it over a mile square of land married girls no more than children, who as soon as they became wives were entitled to claim half a section in their own right;[1] and girls in order to have this right married without due consideration.
Congress had indeed, in its effort to reward the settlers of Oregon for Americanizing the Pacific coast, refused to consider the probable effects of its bounty upon the future of the country, though it was not unknown what it might be.[2] The Oregon legislature, notwithstanding, continued to ask for additional grants and favors; first in 1851–2, that all white American women over eighteen years of age who were in the territory on the 1st of December 1850, not provided for in the donation act, should be given 320 acres of land; and to all white American women over twenty-one who had arrived in the territory or might arrive between the dates of December 1, 1850, and December 1, 1853, not provided for, 160 acres; no woman to receive more than one donation, or to receive a patent until she had resided four years in the territory.
It was also asked that all orphan children of white parents, residing in the territory before the 1st of December, 1850, who did not inherit under the act,[3]
- ↑ It has been decided that the words 'single man' included an unmarried woman. 7 Wall., 219. See Deady's Gen. Laws Or., 1843–72. But I do not see how under that construction a woman could be prevented holding as a 'single man' first and as a married woman afterward, because the patent to her husband, as a married man, would include 640 acres, 320 of which would be hers.
- ↑ 'They said it would be injurious to the country schools, by preventing the country from being thickly settled; that it would retard the agricultural growth of the country; and though it would meet the case of many deserving men, it would open the door to frauds and speculations by all means to be avoided.' Thurston's Letter to the Electors of Oregon, 8; Beadle's Undev. West, 762–3; Home Missionary, vol. 26, p. 45.
- ↑ Those whose parents had died in Oregon before the passage of the law
cember 1, 1850, and are of American birth.' Or. Spectator, May 8, 1851. Thurston in his Letter to the Electors remarks that this feature of the donation act was a popular one in congress, and that he thought it just.
