Transcript Land Lottery - Mrs. Byrd Georgia Studies

Land Lottery
The Land Lottery
• With more land came a decision to change the
way Georgians received land. The headright
system granted land in odd shapes and was
difficult to keep track of. Allowing land
speculators to purchase land resulted in fraud,
so a more “equal” method was created – the
Land Lottery.
• Under the land lottery, surveyors would
divide the land into square-shaped lots.
• The lots were smaller than the headright
system, to encourage more families to move
into the land.
• Lot sized varied depending on the quality of
the land.
– In the Pine Barrens, lots were 490 acres each.
– In the Piedmont, they were 202.5 acres each.
– Later, in the former Cherokee Territory, lots were
160 acres, and some that were known to contain
gold were 40 acres.
The Drawing
• After the land was surveyed, the state held a
lottery (or drawing).
• Every white male U.S. citizen who had lived in
Georgia for 12 months and was at least 21
years old was allowed one chance.
• If he had a wife and child, he got two
chances.
• Widows and orphans also got chances.
• People who wanted land would register at a
county courthouse.
• Their names were sent to the state capitol where
their names were written on tickets and placed in
a barrel.
• In another barrel, tickets were numbered to
represent each of the parcels of land.
• State officials would draw names and numbers
from the barrels at the same time.
• Those who received land were called
“fortunate drawers.”
• Except for a recording fee of $4 for every 100
acres, it was absolutely free.
• The first land lottery was held in 1805.
• During the next 28 years, five more lotteries
were held.
• Under the lottery system, Georgia distributed
about 30 million acres of land west of the
Oconee River to more than 100,000 fortunate
drawers.
• QUESTION: Which seems more fair, the
headright system or the land lottery? Why?