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Presidential Land Grants - A Recent Discovery
By Andreas Wiemer & Stephen Koschal
Your mail arrives and you open an envelope containing an offer of a presidential land grant. The owner of the document states: “....the document is regarding land in the territory of Arkansas. The document is dated November 27, 1820. This document was handed down to me from my grandfather. He was an avid collector who has donated his civil war collection to the Smithsonian Institute...” The letter continues: “....the document is in nice condition but has been folded. It contains a very dark signature of the President of the United States, James Monroe. It is also countersigned by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, Josiah Meigs. I think $60.00 is a fair asking price.......”
There was no photocopy of the document enclosed however with such a description one really wasn’t necessary. Even if you didn’t collect Land Grants signed by the Presidents, this $60.00 offering is a deal that can’t be passed up. You could always send it to auction or use it in trade.
Just about anyone who collects U.S. Presidential signed items knows that Andrew Jackson was the first president to employ a secretary sign land grants. This has been mentioned in almost every book written about signatures of the Presidents of the United States. In the section of Andrew Jackson in Robert Notlep’s 1968 book, The Autograph Collector, A New Guide states: “These (presidential signed land) grants were signed prior to 1833. After that date, clerks were authorized to sign his name”.
Kenneth Rendell’s wonderful book History Comes To Life states: “...little or no effort was made to imitate the president’s signatures after secretaries were authorized to sign presidential land grants partway through Andrew Jackson’s administration”.
Charles Hamilton’s The Book of Autographs states: “The presidents from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt employed secretaries to counterfeit their signatures on land grants. After 1834 no president personally signed such documents”.
In another one of Hamilton’s books Collecting Autographs and Manuscripts he writes: “...The Louisiana Purchase set Madison and Monroe to driving the quill, signing tens of thousands of land grants for veterans who wished to settle in the new regions. Finally, Andrew Jackson rebelled and pout a stop to the Presidential stint of signing several hundred papers daily....”
Last but not least Hamilton states in his book Scribblers and Scoundrels: “The rash of Presidential proxies really began with Old Hickory back in 1834. Before the era of that doughty soldier, all Presidents had personally assumed the burden of signing the countless hundreds of routine documents which crossed their desk each week-land grants, ship’s papers, military appointments....”
Two weeks later, the package arrives containing the James Monroe signed land grant. Upon opening you are astonished to see that both the Meigs and Monroe signatures have clearly been signed by a secretary. See illustration below. We now know that James Monroe was the first president to employ a secretary to sign land grants.
Amazingly, upon further research, we discovered another James Monroe land grant also dated November 27, 1820. This one resides in the Seymour Library, Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. This one contains genuine signatures of James Monroe and Josiah Meigs. Why Monroe signed one document and not the other on the same date remains a mystery.
Credit:
Andreas Wiemer, member of the Manuscript Society from Germany, author, presidential autograph collector and U.S. Presidents expert for www.isitreal.com
Stephen Koschal, long time member of the Manuscript Society and contributor to Manuscripts. Author of over 200 articles and books published on autograph collecting. Lecturer, autograph authenticator and court appointed autograph “expert witness”.
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Autograph Article 
