To the Congress of the United States of America
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- Created Date
- 1816
- Description
This document is a petition signed by 54 Prairie du Chien residents asking Congress to grant them legal title to their houses and lands. They claim that they or their parents or grandparents had lived there since 1755 without any formal documentation and request Congressman John Scott, chair of the House Committee on Public Lands, to legally validate that they own their homes. The document may have been composed by James H. Lockwood (1793-1857) who arrived in Prairie du Chien in the summer of 1816 and was the first English-speaking resident there. The petition descended to the grandson of Congressman Scott; he gave it in 1919 to a Prairie du Chien resident whose descendants conveyed it to the Society in 2010. The original manuscript is shown here in color (the contrast has been heightened somewhat to improve legibility), followed by a typed transcript made by a previous owner.
- Partner
- Recollection Wisconsin
- Contributing Institution
- Wisconsin Historical Society
- Type
- text
- Language
- English
- Rights
- We believe that online reproduction of this material is permitted because its copyright protection has lapsed or because sharing it here for non-profit educational purposes complies with the Fair Use provisions of the U.S. Copyright Law. Teachers and students are generally free to reproduce pages for nonprofit classroom use. For advice about other uses, or if you believe that you possess copyright to some of this material, please contact us at asklibrary@wisconsinhistory.org.
- Chicago citation style
- To the Congress of the United States of America. 1816. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/tp/id/72462. (Accessed March 28, 2024.)
- APA citation style
- (1816) To the Congress of the United States of America. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/tp/id/72462
- MLA citation style
- Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America <http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/tp/id/72462>.