Bounty Land, Bureaucracy and Badly Patronized - War of 1812 Veterans and the Settlement of Defiance County - Part 1

 

Ohio in 1814

WELCOME TO OUR GUEST BLOGGER -

MIKE KONIECZNY

(Mike has used the Bureau of Land Management Records of Defiance County to study bounty lands given to veteran soldiers of Defiance County.)

It seems everyone knows a Vietnam veteran who is still angry at this country's treatment of his cohort in the wake of their tours of duty.  To have done their patriotic duty, fighting an unpopular war, only to come home and be disrespected in the press and on the streets was as infuriating to them as it was confusing.  One hundred and eighty years ago, the veterans of the War of 1812 felt much the same.

Whether they looked behind their times of service to the veterans of the Revolution or forward to the veterans of the Mexican War, 1812 veterans frustratingly saw a country doling out perquisites of bounty land warrants and military pensions in a manner denied and delayed to them.  Interestingly, historians cite many reasons for this discrepancy, but always return to a reoccurring thread in our country's history: Americans love and reward winners; "place" and "show" are afterthoughts.  In both the Revolution and Mexican Wars, America won great land empires.  In contrast, the best we could do in the War of 1812 was to negotiate a return to the "status quo ante bellum."   This was codified in the 1814 Treaty of Ghent which officially ended that war.  Let's face it, Americans hate ties - a big reason soccer has never captured the national psyche.

In February, 2022, I was alerted to the power of the Bureau of Land Management Patent Deed Database.  This database is available on the internet and, in it, the BLM lists every patent deed awarded in the country's history.  Patent deeds record land passing from the federal government to an individual and are tracked at the federal level.  Thereafter, all other types of deeds tracking the transfer of property are recorded locally.

Within the BLM database exists a designator for land deeds awarded to 18th and 19th century veterans for their wartime service.  In an age when the U.S. government was land rich and cash poor, awards of land for military service were the G.I. Bill of the time and served as a thank you from a grateful nation.  In total, these awards were consequential; indeed, all land awarded to veterans up through the American Civil Wa amounted to a land mass the size of the state of Oregon.  Using this database designator, I found it a small matter to download all records of deeds for military service.

Using this database, I was certain that it would be easy to prove that Military Bounty Lands were a major catalyst in the development of Defiance County.  My hypothesis was based on two vectors:

*The first was that during the War of 1812, a noticeable percentage of military aged Kentucky men tromped up and down the Maumee River and were aware of the agricultural potential of the Black Swamp - especially around the Defiance area.

*And the second was that Defiance County was bisected by a major water course; indeed the Maumee River basin is the largest watershed in all the Great Lakes.

Combined, the two vectors would certainly explain why War of 1812 veterans came flocking back to Defiance County to exercise their Bounty Land Warrants.  What I found was considerably more complicated...

More on Part 2