One of the first urban legends about Cape Girardeau

It was quite an incentive package that Spanish authorities offered to settlers willing to move to the Cape Girardeau District: free land and no taxes. The settlers just had to pay a small fee to have their chosen land surveyed.

When the Americans took control following the Louisiana Purchase, the luxury of tax-free living quickly disappeared. Even worse, the United States government was reluctant at best to confirm the land grants that the Spanish had promised.

A board of land commissioners was established to decide each claim. The three-member board examined the available Spanish documents and took sworn eyewitness testimony.

The board members were quick to find any excuse to reject claims. In one case, George Frederick Bollinger's petition was denied because he signed it as "Frederick Bollinger" instead of using his full name.

Louis Lorimier's petition was rejected after the board nitpicked his supporting documents. The town of Cape Girardeau, sitting on Lorimier's land grant, suddenly found itself in serious jeopardy. The situation was finally resolved decades later, but not before the county seat had been moved to Jackson.

Edwin James, who visited the area as part of Major Stephen Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-20, published an account of the journey, and he wrote at length about the problem of land grants:

"In the old district of Cape Girardeau, as in other parts of Louisiana, the difficulty of establishing indisputable titles to the lands, arising out of the great number of Spanish grants, pre-emption, and improvement claims, has greatly retarded the settlement of the country. Establishments were made here more than one hundred and fifty years since; yet the features of the country are little changed, retaining the rudeness and gloominess of the original forest."

James reported that a "respectable citizen" of Ste. Genevieve told him a story about one dubious land case. It went like this:

"A person, somewhere in the county of Cape Girardeau, being desirous of establishing a claim to this kind to a tract of land, adopted the following method:-- The time having expired for the establishment of a right, agreeably to the spirit of the law, he took with him two witnesses to the favorite spot, on which he wished to establish his claim, and in their presence marked two trees, standing on opposite sides of a spring; one with the figures 1803, the other 1804, and placed a stalk of growing corn in the spring. He then brought witnesses before the commissioners, who upon their declaration, that they had seen corn growing at the place specified, in the spring between 1803 and 1804, admitted the claim of the applicant, and gave him title to the land."

This story was reprinted in newspapers across the country, but it's hard to believe that the commissioners, as strict as they were, would have accepted such sketchy testimony. This sounds like an urban legend, perhaps one of the first told about Cape Girardeau.