[Group of Real Estate Contracts Between Land Speculators and the Nebraska Land Department of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad Company]

Lincoln, 1874. Very good.. Eighteen partially-printed documents, each two pages, completed in manuscript. Large folio. Old folds, some tears, a few partial fold separations, scattered foxing. Overall a nice group. A collection of eighteen contracts made between land speculators and the Nebraska Land Department of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad Company, for defined parcels of land purchased through the Nebraska General Land Office. Fifteen of the eighteen contracts are dated in 1870 (just three short years after Nebraska achieved statehood), with two dated in 1871, and the last in 1874. The contracts are made between the railroad company and mainly buyers from Nebraska, but also speculators from New York, Illinois, and Michigan. The parcels are defined by section, township, range, and more specific survey details. All of the contracts also include payment terms for ten-year financing of the land purchases. The bottom half of the documents are mostly boilerplate legalese. The documents are signed at the bottom by the commissioner, secretary, and treasurer of the Nebraska General Land Office. The versos of most documents record no payment information or minimum payment information and are then stamped "Cancelled." In two instances, multiple payments are noted and are not cancelled; in one case, the land is then resold to another party, with details completed in manuscript. The buyers here include important early Nebraska pioneers like Willis J. Horton, Amos Samson, James T. Clement, and William Remington, who donated land to create towns such as Saline and Swan City. A useful collection of railroad land contracts providing important information on early Nebraska settlement and the economics of the railroad business in the Middle West at the outset of the 1870s.