Hi, folks.
Hopefully, some of the "geeks" in this lounge can help me with a topic from American History.
I think it was in Grade 10 (which was quite a few years ago) that I learned a little about early American history. Some years after the original thirteen colonies were established, politicians wanted to encourage western settlement. In some regions, lotteries were held for plots of land. In other regions, plots of land were allotted to people who raced out to grab stakes when a whistle was blown at, say, 9 am one morning. However, there was a substantial piece of legislation that allotted land simply by the presence of people working that land—if a person settled on a piece of land, and worked what was previously an unused piece of land, that was their claim to it. I think that legislation was named the “Northwest Bill”, or the “Western Expansion Bill” or something like that. I cannot remember the name of this Bill and it is bugging me. Does anybody here know the name of the Bill I am talking about?
David