“The Territorial Papers of the United States” Volume VI, The Territory of Mississippi, 1809-1817 PETITION TO CONGRESS BY PURCHASERS OF PUBLIC LANDS EAST OF PEARL RIVER
[No date, 1815] To the Honourable the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress Assembled: the humble petition of certain purchasers of public lands east of Pearl River Respectfully Showeth. That when your petitioners made purchase of public lands,-they did believe that they purchased them under the simple condition of paying for them in certain instalments, and under the expectation that if they failed to make payment on the day appointed,-they would be liable, as in all similar contracts, to pay the interest on their instalments from the time they became due. Experience has sadly convinced your petitioners that the receivers of public monies, insist, on the part of the United States, not only upon the ordinary, simple, legal interest upon instalments not paid on the day,-but on a certain forfeiture or penalty, under the name of “back interest”, founded on the principle that on the failure of payment at the period appointed,-the government becomes entitled not only to interest from that time, but to interest from the very day of purchase;-thus raising a charge against the unfortunate purchaser,-not only of simple interest, but in some cases of even double or treble compound interest. Your petitioners can scarcely believe that this was ever the intention of the just and paternal government of the United States:-and they have a firm hope that the statement of the existing evil is alone sufficient to insure a remedy. Some of your petitioners had, perhaps, peculiar reason to deem the existing practice a severe one. They had purchased land, before they removed to the territory; and during the state of indian hostility it was impossible for an inhabitant of Georgia or Carolina to reach the land office in St Stephens with the instalment due:-and had they reached it; they would have found the doors of the office shut, and all kinds of civil business utterly suspended. Your petitioners therefore humbly hope that a law will pass for refunding what is called back interest, & forbidding its collection in future: and your petitioners as in duty bound &c <A few of the names with possible connections to B. J. Frost> Lovelace Mott William Landrum Jonah Mott Jesse B Landrum Mathew Hicks John Landrum John Cox Jas Lawson
Died at home on Horse Creek.
John has a sister named Amanda.
By the 1880 census, she and her daughter Mary Ann and father-in-law H H Wheeler, lived with Amanda. Elizabeth's husband denied paternity of their daughter and declared his wife insane.
Note: Have no idea if this is a connection or not. Research needed.
LANDRUM, John Morgan, 1815-1861LANDRUM, John Morgan, a Representative from Louisiana; born in Edgefield District, S.C., July 3, 1815; pursued classical studies and was graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) at Columbia in 1842; taught school for several years; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1844 and commenced the practice of law in Shreveport, La.; mayor of Shreveport in 1848 and 1849; elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-sixth Congress (March 4, 1859-March 3, 1861); was not a candidate for renomination in 1860 to the Thirty-seventh Congress; continued the practice of his profession until his death in Shreveport, Caddo Parish, La., October 18, 1861; interment in Oakland Cemetery.