2022-01 Raynors HCA Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/28/2022
Preprinted land grant, December 24, 1794, 13-1/2" x 16-1/2" with 2" repairable horizontal split, being a land transfer from Samuel James Young to John Nicholson Esq. of 400 acres for five shillings. John Nicholson (1758-1800) was a Welsh-born émigré to Pennsylvania who engaged in a variety of business ventures in revolutionary-era Philadelphia. In 1778 he was appointed clerk to the Board of Treasury of the Continental Congress. In 1782 he was appointed state Comptroller General, involving him in the collection of taxes and the liquidation of Loyalists convicted of treason in absentia. In 1793, he was impeached for personally speculating in federal securities with state funds. He was acquitted but forced to resign because he was by this time a large public defaulter. In 1795, he joined Robert Morris and James Greenleaf in creating the North American Land Company, which invested in six million acres of lands in six states. Stung by the worldwide panic of 1797 and the Napoleonic Wars (which drove down the European market for American lands), Morris and Nicholson were each imprisoned for debt.
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