certified to the State in lieu thereof by virtue of the provisions of this act, shall inure to and be held as a trust fund for the benefit of the person or persons whose titles shall have failed as aforesaid.”
The amount of lands including this additional grant, embraced in the Des Moines River grant, lying within five miles of the Des Moines River from the Raccoon Fork acres, and among the most valuable lands in the State, embracing coal, gypsum and the best timber lands in Iowa.
This was known as the indemnity grant and under it D. W. Kilbourne, one of the officials of the Keokuk, Des Moines and Minnesota Railroad Company, was made the agent of the State to select these indemnity lands, amounting to 297,603 acres.
The old Navigation Company and its grantees now came before the Commissioner of the General Land Office, after having received its full share of the indemnity, and claimed the lands held by the settlers, preëmpted or purchased from the Government.
The Commissioner informed this Company on the 29th of June, 1867:
“That it is not understood upon what ground a claim upon the Des Moines River grant can now be set up to the tracts covered by actual settlement by preëmption, when in the final settlement of the grant, allowance for the benefit of said improvement claim has been fully given in other lands by way of indemnity and accepted by the State accordingly. Your request, therefore, that all preëmption claims to the lands within the limits indicated be rejected unless they had their inception prior to the original grant of August 8, 1846, is hereby declined.”
In March, 1868, the State of Iowa granted to the Des Moines Valley Railroad Company 297,000 acres of these indemnity lands.
