The claim to lands in this case originated as follows: On the 17th of December, 1798, William Coleman, an inhabitant of New Feliciana, within the bounds of the present State of Louisiana, east of the Mississippi River, applied to the Spanish governor-general for a grant of six hundred and ten arpents of land, for a plantation and settlement, in the district of Baton Rouge, three miles from the Mississippi. A certificate of the local surveyor was annexed to the application, certifying that there were vacant lands in the district of St. Helena, on the west bank of the Tangipahoa River, beginning at the thirty-first parallel of latitude (the boundary line of the United States), in which could be found the arpents front which the petitioner asked for, excluding whatever might be in the possession of actual settlers. The place thus indicated was about fifty miles east of the Mississippi. To this application Grandpr e, the surveyor of the district, added a further certificate, dated Dec. 22, 1798, and addressed to the governor, by which he stated that four hundred and ten arpents might be conceded in the place indicated by the local surveyor. Thereupon the governor, De Lemos, on the 2d of January, 1799, issued a warrant or order of survey, in the following terms (as translated):--
'NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 2, 1799.
'The surveyor of this province, Don Carlos Trudeau, shall locate this interested party on four hundred and ten arpents of land, front, in the place indicated in the foregoing certificate, they being vacant, and thereby not causing injury to any one, with the express condition to make the high-road and do the usual clearing of timber in the absolutely fixed limit in one year; and that this concession is to remain null and void if at the expiration of the precise space of three years the land shall not be found settled upon, and to not be able to alienate it within the same three years, under which supposition there shall be carried out uninterruptedly the proceedings of the survey, which he (the surveyor) shall transmit to me, so as to provide the interested party with the corresponding title-papers in due form.
(Signed) 'MANUEL GAYOSO DE LEMOS.'
This is the only title presented, and neither survey nor settlement, nor improvement of any kind, appears ever to have been made on the part of the petitioner or any one claiming under him. The only thing done by him in that direction was to procure from Pintado, the local Spanish surveyor at Baton Rouge, on the 26th of February, 1806, after the country had been ceded to the United States, but before this part had been surrendered by Spain, an authority to one Ira C. Kneeland, a deputy surveyor, to survey the tract according to certain general instructions (which do not appear), specifying, however, that it was understood that the warrant was for a certain number of arpents in front, and that the depth ought to be forty arpents, or four hundred perches of Paris; which would make the tract contain sixteen thousand four hundred arpents, the quantity now sought to be recovered of the United States. But nothing was ever done by Kneeland, and the prosecution of the grant seems to have been abandoned by Coleman and his assigns until long afterwards. Grandpr e himself, in 1806 (having become governor), issued a warrant for a thousand arpents, on a portion of the tract, to one Robert Yarr, who entered upon and settled the same; and his title was subsequently confirmed by the United States. And before the country was occupied by our government, actual settlers had become possessed of the whole tract, who were subsequently confirmed in their holdings by the act of March 3, 1819, upon the report of the commissioners who had been appointed to investigate the title to lands in that region. Most of the claims of these settlers were presented to Commissioner Cosby in 1812, 1813, and 1814, he being then engaged in ascertaining all claims to lands in the district west of Pearl River. His report was made in the early part of 1815 (Amer. State Papers, Public Lands, vol. iii. pp. 39-76); but no claim seems to have been presented by Coleman for the lands in question.
On the 16th of September, 1814, he assigned his right to the land to one Charles McMicken, under whom the appellant claims as devisee. But neither did McMicken present any claim to the commissioner.