The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1930-08-29
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tial claim to ownership of the land
on which the state capitol now stands.
I cannot sue the state for breach of
contract without the states consent,
and the statute of limitation has ex-
pired. But believe the people of
Virginia would like to see the proper
settlement made"
Nor is this Richmond merchant the
only one who is interested in this mat
ter for he declares that other old
Richmond families, among them the
Snyders, Curries, Archibald Carys,
Prices and Acrille COches, had half
acre lots condemned in 1884 and pres
ent-day descendants of those families
are watching with interest his move
for restitution.
Nor is this Virginia case unique,
for Oklahoma has somewhat SINH
lar one, only the mo Mans Land"
there has infinitely greater potential,
riches to make it worth fighting for.
1t is a small triangular tract of about
two acres in the heart of the great
Oklahoma City oil fields which has
been lost for 60 years. No Boomer"
homesteaded it after the run" into
Oklahoma in 1889. The surveyors and
mapmakers seemed to have missed it
and it is still government soil.
No one seems to have dreamed that
this valuable parcel of land was avail
able to a claiiner until recently when
Forrest PARROT of Oklahoma City,
guided by maps which others had seen,
no doubt, but failed to realize their
significance, began a bit of prospect
ing in the archives of the register
of deeds at the Oklahoma county
court house.
What he found was almost unbe-
lievable-a plot Of unclaimed land,
sandwiched right in the middle of one
of the richest oil areas of the world.
So Mr.. PARROT staged the run of
$780," With an armful of stakes he
dashed out to the little silver of river
bottom land and drove his pegs.
Then, as in the prairie schooner and
sunbOnnet days of AZ years ago, Mr..
PARROT set about making his claim
legal. He went back to the court
house and filed an affidavit of his
claim, setting forth he was filing on
it as homestead and claiming pri-
GRITTY rights as an ex-service man.
The triangular shape of the neg
lected piece of land was caused by
the antics of the North Canadian
river.
When the government surveyors
made their first survey of 1870 they
did an excellent job for working out
the river bottom into chopped-up lots,
but they forgot this one tract.
The tract is in the center of the
most intense drilling activity in the
Oklahoma City Oil field. Half a mile
east is T. B. Sticks No. Bailey IT,
O0O-barrel-a-day wen, and the same
distance south the 2,0O0-barrel-a-day
well owned by Writ Franklin.
And yet these are only two ex-
amples of queer claims which result
from surveyors or mapmakers' errors
or some slip-up in registering deeds or
some other title to land. A curious
case was reported from New York re-
Gently, and added another item to the
record of high-priced real estate in
that city where some plots of ground
are literally worth more than the
number of silver dollars it would take
to cover them. In this case pur-
chaser of real estate paid a total of
$1,000 for 21S square inches of land
$3.50 square inch 1t came about in
this way:
One of the Mrs. Vanderbilts wanted
to buy plot of ground in Fast Fifty
seventh street between First avenue
and the river, on which once stood
five brownstones, built in the seven
ties by one Harvey Dennis, a consid-
cradle realtor of his day. Naturally
the prospective purchaser wanted to
be sure she had a clear claim to the
title, so she had experts of the Title
Guarantee & Trust company look it up.
For what if after the house were
erected somebody should bob up and
claim strip of property, eighteen feet
by one inch, running right through
the building? Such demand would
form a grave crisis. In this instance
a hunt was made for the Dennis heirs.
1t was hard TO find them. 1t took two