President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison Grant Land to a Canadian Who Served in the Continental Army

During the Revolutionary War, there were certain Canadians who sympathized with, and rendered aid to, the United States, some of them joining the American Army. For this lack of loyalty to the Crown of Great Britain, that government confiscated their possessions. For their co-operation with the Americans in their struggle for independence, after the war the government of the United States determined to reserve for them a strip of land in Ohio – three townships adjacent to Lake Erie. This was called the Refugee Tract.
In 1801, Congress passed “An Act regulating the grants of land appropriated for the refugees from the British provinces of Canada and Nova Scotia.” It ordered that the land be surveyed and subdivided, and even provided the names of some of the entitled claimants and specified to how much land they were entitled. One person mentioned by name in the Act of Congress was Lieutenant William Maxwell, who was to receive 300 acres. As for his service, his name appears in the “Journals of the military expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779.”

Document signed by Thomas Jefferson as President and James Madison as Secretary of State, Washington, March 13, 1802. “In pursuance of the act of Congress passed on the 18th day of February, 1801, entitled ’An Act regulating the grants of land appropriated for the refugees from the British provinces of Canada and Nova Scotia’, there is granted unto William Maxwell a certain tract of land estimated to contain three hundred twenty nine acres and nine perches, being half Section Number three in Township Number twelve and range twenty one of the lands set apart and reserved for the purpose of satisfying the claims of the refugees aforesaid…”

This is only our second such land grant in all our decades in this field.