William J. Alt's big swamp land purchase

Originally much of the southern end of Cape Girardeau County was swampland. These forested areas were unattractive to settlement because of frequent flooding. The land offices had difficulty selling this federal land, and in 1850 Congress ceded wetland acreage to individual states. Missouri offered the reduced priced land to individuals who could prove they had settled it, but sales still lagged. The next step was for the Missouri General Assembly to transfer swamp and overflowed lands to the counties. Cape Girardeau County received its remaining 35,469.89 acres of wetland from the state Nov. 4, 1871.

This event set up the entry of William John Alt into the history of Cape Girardeau County. Alt was a British subject, born to Lt. Daniel Alt and Anna Hill in 1840. His mother died in childbirth in 1848. His father remarried Ann Jane (Shepherd) and died in 1850. William's stepmother raised him and his siblings. Alt went to sea on a merchant ship as a cabin boy at age 12 to help his impoverished stepmother. He joined the custom service in China at age 18, but resigned to pursue opportunities in Japan, which had recently opened to the outside world. Within two years, the firm of Alt and Co. was making a fortune on various commercial ventures. Alt met his wife, Elizabeth Earl, on board a ship to Australia, and the young couple took up residence in Japan. Eventually Alt returned to Surry, England, for his health and lived out his life there. He died Nov. 9, 1908, and at his death had monetary assets of over $5 million in 2022 dollars, plus substantial property. Alt also was president of a railway in Brazil and had property interests in Japan and Australia.

The lure of substantial timber profits probably stimulated William Alt's swampland purchase. The Cape Girardeau County Court sold Alt 19,593.04 acres for 93 cents per acre on March 29, 1875. Almost immediately various interests sued Alt. Several individuals who purchased swamp parcels in the tract from Scott County filed the first suit. They failed to record their purchases, and when the General Assembly adjusted county boundaries in 1865, the land fell in Cape Girardeau County. Alt prevailed in this suit, finally settled in 1899. Other cases involved questions of the legality of the sale, lawsuits over theft of timber, loss of funds to the county school fund and mortgage defaults.

At one point, the Alt firm developed a scheme to dig a 10-mile drainage ditch from the Cape County foothills to White Water River near Randall's Station. This failed, and drainage awaited the formation of the Little River Drainage District in 1907.

Various factors gradually whittled down the large land holding. J.W. Hunter purchased 8,960 acres by 1900 on mortgage default by the Alt concern. Several sales for railroad rights-of-way further reduced the acreage. Alt conveyed 2,520 acres to his son as a wedding gift in 1895. I will continue the story of George E. Alt next time.