CHAPTER CCLXXVII.
An Act for the benefit of Actual Settlers.
Approved by the Kentucky General Assembly on December 21, 1815.
WHEREAS it is represented to the present general assembly, that the waste and unappropriated lands in this commonwealth are generally of little value; and that the persons settled upon them are poor, and in many instances unable to advance money for the procurement of warrants under the act passed at the last session of the legislature on that subject:
SECTION 1. Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, That any person who was an actual settler on waste and unappropriated land on the sixth day of February last, may obtain a warrant for any number of acres not less than fifty, nor more than two hundred, including his or her improvement, and shall have the exclusive privilege of entering and surveying the same, until the first day of September next.
SECTION 2. Be it further enacted, That all persons desirous of acquiring lands under the provisions of this act, shall be governed by the same rules and regulations as are prescribed in the act above alluded to, entitled “an act for appropriating the vacant lands in this commonwealth,” approved the 6th day of February 1815.
SECTION 3. Be it further enacted, That the provisions of this act shall apply as well to those who were actually settled upon waste and unappropriated land, on the first day of December 1815, as to those who were settled under the provisions of the above recited act, on the sixth day of February in the year aforesaid; and the former shall be as much availed of the provisions hereof, as the latter: Provided, the settlers since the 6th day of February 1815, shall not interfere with the settlers prior to the 6th day of February 1815, and two hundred acres, including the first actual settler’s improvement as near in the center as surrounding claims shall admit.
SECTION 4. Be it further enacted, That nothing in the10th section of the above recited act, to which this is an amendment, shall be so construed as to give a preference to any claim held by any person or persons under the laws of this state, covering the residence of the actual settler, whose settlement, with some portion of land around it, has been protected by any former law of this state.
REF: “The Statute Law of Kentucky”, Vol. V., by William Littell, pp. 304-305.