United States Statutes at Large/Volume 5/27th Congress/2nd Session/Chapter 205
Chap. CCV.—An Act to confirm the sale of public lands in certain cases.[1]
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases when any entry has been made,Patents to be issued for tracts entered under the pre-emption laws, but withheld on account of the quantity exceeding that specified in the law, &c. under the pre-emption laws, of land which was public land, subject to sale at the date of such entry, and when patents for the same have not been issued from the General Land Office, because of the original tract claimed, or the float arising therefrom, exceeding the quantity specified in the law, or when the adjudication has been made by the receiver and the clerk of the register, acting in the stead of the register, or when the proof upon which the claim is founded is not in the form, nor full, as to all the facts required by law, but substantially so, such entries and sales are hereby confirmed, and patents shall be issued thereon, as in other cases:Proviso. Provided, That the Secretary of the Treasury shall be satisfied that such entries have been in other respects fair and regular, and that the evidence sustains the claim; that they are not contested by other persons claiming the same, and that no fraud shall appear in them: And provided, also, That the act of Proviso: act 4th Sept. 1841, ch. 16, not to confer a right of pre-emption by reason of settlement on a tract heretofore sold.fourth September, eighteen hundred and forty-one, entitled “An act to appropriate the proceeds of the sales of public lands, and to grant pre-emption rights,” shall be so construed as not to confer on any one a right of pre-emption by reason of a settlement made on a tract heretofore sold under a prior pre-emption law, or at private entry, when such prior pre-emption or entry has not been confirmed by the General Land Office, on account of any alleged defect therein, and when such tract has passed into the hands of an innocent and bona fide purchaser.
Approved, August 26, 1842.
- ↑ See notes of the acts relating to pre-emption rights, May 29, 1830, ch. 208.