Overlapping Land Dispute Between England Pros And Cons

During the colonization of the New World, there were many overlapping land grants given to the colonies. Due to these overlapping land grants, there were many boundary disputes between the different colonies. One such example could be seen between the colonies of Connecticut and Pennsylvania with the Wyoming Valley. The Wyoming Valley is a large area of land “adjacient to the River Susqueannah between the forty first and forty third degrees of North Latitude” which has been described as being very beautiful. The boundary dispute between the two colonies led to a series of wars dubbed the Yankee-Pennamite Wars. These wars were ultimately resolved under the Articles of Confederation with Pennsylvania receiving ownership of the land. This disputed

This land initially belonged to the Iroquois who placed the land into the “possession of the Delaware Indians” and it was not until 1742 that the first European settler, Count Zinzendorf, actually entered the Wyoming Valley. Given that Pennsylvania established a policy that settlers could only settle on land legally bought from the Indians, this meant that the colony did not have any land title or ownership over this land until they bought it from the Indians. Later, in 1753, the Susquehanna Company was formed in Connecticut with the goals of “forming a settlement in Wyoming.” The Susquehanna Company began this task in 1754 with the Albany Purchase and Connecticut finally began to send settlers into the disputed land in 1774. This was met with resistance from the Pennsylvanians and the Native Americans in the area, initiating these wars which persisted throughout the American Revolutionary War. Following the war, Pennsylvania petitioned the Continental Congress under section nine of the Articles of Confederation which stated that Congress “shall be the last resort of appeal in disputes and differences . . . between two or more states, concerning boundaries, jurisdiction or any other cause.” A meeting occurred in Trenton, New Jersey to settle the case with James Wilson, a founding father, signer of the Constitution, and later a member of the Supreme Court, arguing the case for

With this, Governor Trumbull of Connecticut wrote a letter in 1774 to the governor of Pennsylvania giving him the “official information concerning the steps which had been taken by Connecticut” to establishing this settlement. One such step was annexing Westmoreland County to Litchfield County of Connecticut, which “stimulated immigration, and settlers from Connecticut flocked into the territory.” Some towns that were founded by Connecticut settlers in Pennsylvania that were in Connecticut’s Westmoreland County include: Wilkes-Barre; Nanticoke, later Hanover; Pittstown, later Pittston; Plymouth; and the Forty Township, later changed to Kingstown and then to Kingston. With all of these legal procedures that Connecticut went through in establishing their settlement and the fact that Connecticut had a county and towns in Pennsylvania, Connecticut should have received the disputed land from the Trenton