Page 59 - Foy

WHY DID PEOPLE COME TO AMERICA?

In England and most of Europe, land, wealth, power, class status, and almost
everything else a human could hope for in order to have a better life, was beyond
reach for most everyone. In those times and in those lands, it was almost impossible
to change one’s status in life. A man remained what he was born. He could hope for
little more than his parents and their parents before them had experienced.

In our modern American history books we were taught religious freedom was the
motivation for those colonist who left their world to come to the new but they came
for more reasons than that. Hopes of economic betterment, of owning their own
homes and land, of being able to have a voice in how things were decided were just
as important and as strong in their minds as religion, according to their writings.

But, what was the price for these dreams ? What was the cost of leaving the security
of a land where civilized people had lived for centuries and moving everything they
had to a savage land ? Besides fighting the vast unexplored wilderness and the savage
people who inhabited it the colonist soon learned they would have to fight some of
the same political system they thought they had left behind.

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EARLY SETTLEMENT and THE LAND SYSTEM

Under the terms of the charter of Maryland as granted by King Charles I of England,
Lord Baltimore and his heirs were given all the land in the colony. They could
dispose of the land in any way they wanted.

With such broad powers, the Lords Baltimore used land grants to create a permanent
revenue source for themselves and their heirs through mandatory fees built into the
system of purchasing land. In order to purchase land a settler paid the purchase price
for the amount of land he wanted. He then received a “common warrant”. That
“common warrant” directed a deputy surveyor to survey the land being purchased.
When the land was surveyed and a legal description of it, known as a “certificate of
survey”, was filed at the land office, a patent (or title) was issued. The settler had to
pay fees for each of these steps.

Ch. 5 Pg. 3