1819 Cherokee Reservation List

Throughout this period of voluntary westward movement, the U.S. War Department’s Office of Indian Affairs kept detailed lists of Cherokee emigrants. These records, known collectively as the Cherokee Emigration Rolls, cover the years 1817 through 1835. They are essentially muster rolls or enrollment lists of Cherokee individuals and families who agreed to move west prior to the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. The rolls were created to track who had emigrated (or intended to), for purposes of land apportionment, compensation for improvements left behind, and later, distribution of western land and supplies.

This specific roll is of a list of 146 heads of families entitled to reservations under the Treaty with the Cherokee of the 27th February, 1819. This War Department report was read, and laid on the table, 23 January 1828 under the 20th Congress, 1st Session and published as Doc. No. 104.

LIST OF PERSON’S entitled to Reservations, under the Treaty with the Cherokees, of 27th February, 1819, according to the treaty, and the returns of the Commissioners appointed to superintend the surveying and laying off said Reservations, to the Department of War, shewing [sic] those entitled to Reservations for life, and those entitled to Reservations in fee simple.

Reservations For Life

In the 1819 treaty the head of the Cherokee family, named below, was the life tenant. If the individual left the reservation or died, the treaty stated the land would either go to the remaindermen (the spouse or children) or, if the family abandoned the tract, back to the United States.

Reservations Fee Simple

In the 1819 treaty the children of the life tenant were designated to receive the land in fee simple once their parent’s life estate ended. That meant they and their heirs, held outright, private ownership, no longer tied to tribal land claims or federal supervision.

NOTE

All those marked * are within the limits of the State of Georgia, being eighteen life estate reservations and five fee simple reservations; and all, or nearly all of them, have been purchased for the State of Georgia, under a provision made by Congress for that purpose.

T. L. McKenney

Reservations Specified in Article 3 of the 1819 Treaty:

• Lewis Ross reservation, so to be laid off as to include his house, and out-buildings, and ferry adjoining the Cherokee agency, reserving to the United States all the public property there, and the continuance of the said agency where it now is, during the pleasure of the government.
• Major Walker’s reservation, so as to include his dwelling house and ferry: for Major Walker an additional reservation is made of six hundred and forty acres square, to include his grist and saw mill; the land is poor, and principally valuable for its timber.
• Cabbin Smith reservation, six hundred and forty acres, to be laid off in equal parts, on both sides of his ferry on Tellico, commonly called Blair’s ferry.
• John Ross reservation, six hundred and forty acres, to be laid off so as to include the Big Island in Tennessee river, being the first below Tellico-which tracts of land were given many years since, by the Cherokee nation, to them.
• Mrs. Eliza Ross reservation, step daughter of Major Walker, six hundred and forty acres square, to be located on the river below and adjoining Major Walker’s.
• Margaret Morgan reservation, six hundred and forty acres square, to be located on the west of, and adjoining, James Riley’s reservation.
• George Harlin reservation, six hundred and forty acres square, to be located west of, and adjoining, the reservation of Margaret Morgan.
• James Lowry reservation, six hundred and forty acres square, to be located at Crow Mocker’s old place, at the foot of Cumberland mountain.
• Susannah Lowry reservation, six hundred and forty acres, to be located at the Toll Bridge on Battle Creek.
• Nicholas Byers reservation, six hundred and forty acres, including the Toqua Island, to be located on the north bank of the Tennessee, opposite to said Island.

Article 3 of the Cherokee treaty signed 27 Feb 1819 allowed each Cherokee head of family who chose U.S. citizenship to keep a 640-acre reservation that would be held

• “in a life estate … with a reversion in fee simple to their children, reserving to the widow her dower”

The two legal phrases describe how ownership was divided between the parent and the next generation.

For Life

In the treaty the head of the Cherokee family was the life tenant. If the parent left the reservation or died, the treaty said the land would either go to the named remaindermen (the children) or, if the family abandoned the tract, back to the United States.

Fee simple

A fee simple absolute is the broadest estate recognized in Anglo-American law Legal Information Institute.

In the 1819 treaty the children of the life tenant were designated to receive the land in fee simple once their parent’s life estate ended. That meant they and their heirs, held outright, private ownership, no longer tied to tribal land claims or federal supervision.

Why the distinction mattered

• Security for the parent: The life estate let the head of family remain on familiar ground without being forced to move west.
• Inheritance for the children: By putting the remainder “in fee simple,” Congress and Cherokee negotiators ensured that the next generation owned the land outright, creating a bridge between traditional Cherokee use rights and U.S. private-property concepts.
• Genealogical clues: In later county deed books you often find patents or conveyances filed in the children’s names, not the original life tenant’s, because only the fee-simple holders could perfect title after the parent’s death.

Put simply, “for life” granted the parent a personal right to stay, while “fee simple” gave the children—and their descendants—full, inheritable ownership once that life right expired.