Thaddeus O'Malley's Timber Culture Grant

Earlier this year, I researched a man named Thaddeus O'Malley to determine if he could be related to my second-great-grandmother Catherine Ryan Gilbride. Thaddeus O'Malley and his wife Honora McNally are the common ancestral couple to several of my DNA matches. My hypothesis is that they are related to Catherine's line in some way, as I cannot account for them in any other direct line. This research at present is stalled...and a job for another day.

I did learn something new, though, while looking into Thaddeus O'Malley's life. He was granted a land patent in Nebraska in 1892. It was a Timber Culture land patent—an unfamiliar type.

The Timber Culture Act was passed in 1873, and followed the Homestead Act of 1862. It awarded up to 160 acres of public land after applicants made improvements, including planting 40 acres of trees on their land (later lowered to ten acres). The program aimed to provide lumber to residents of the Great Plains for building and fuel, and also to supposedly bring rainfall—a misinformed notion of the time. Later amendments to the program awarded smaller parcels and required fewer trees to be planted.¹

The tree planting process took at least three years on each 5 acres, with additional 5 acre plots being added into the rotation each year. In the first year, the land had to be broken. The second year, the land was cultivated, with the trees planted in the third year. After planting, the applicant had to keep the trees alive—a tall order on the plains facing lack of rainfall or other natural disasters. After eight years, the claimant could offer his final proof, accompanied by the affidavits of two witnesses, in order to obtain the land.²

I ordered O'Malley's land grant case file from the National Archives to see if it contained any clues to help me in my research. I learned that O'Malley had applied for 160 acres in November 1883. The location was the SE 1/4 of section 22, township 30, range 12W, in Holt County, Nebraska. He planted a total of 10 acres of trees—ash, box elder, and cottonwood—on his stake. In his final proof affidavit sworn out in 1892, he said of the 2,700 trees he had planted on each acre, he had 1,500 trees still growing and healthy, a fact he knew, "...by actually counting."³

The smaller square shows O'Malley's land location, north of O'Neill, Nebraska.4

Witnesses Thomas Waldron and Michael Welsh swore out their affidavits in support of O'Malley's proof. He made his final timber culture application payment of $4 on 7 March 1892, following up the $14 he paid back in 1883 to begin the process. O'Malley received his patent for 160 acres on 2 September 1892.⁵

The packet also contained the tattered receipt from O'Malley's original Timber Culture application #4406, dated 30 November 1883. I can image Thaddeus keeping this folded up in his pocket, ready at hand to prove his interest in the land he hoped to one day own.⁶

The Niobrara, Nebraska, Land Office issued O'Malley this receipt in 1883.

While the details of the timber culture program were interesting enough, the packet also contained a remarkable document that illustrates the value of researching in land grant records.

Tucked inside the packet was Thaddeus O'Malley's original naturalization certificate! Applicants had to provide proof of citizenship as part of their final  application. What a treasure Thaddeus had to part with! 

Thaddeus O'Malley's naturalization certificate awarded in 1892.

 

The certificate was issued in the District Court for Holt County, Nebraska, in O'Neill, where the Irish-born Thaddeus lived. He was granted citizenship on 7 March 1892; he had previously declared his oath of intention to become a U.S. citizen in the Mayor's Court in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. That location does mean something to me, as my Ryan and Gilbride families lived in Providence and Scranton, just to the southwest of Carbondale, from the 1850s. It placed O'Malley squarely in the same locality as my Ryan and Gilbride ancestors in his earlier life.⁷

I'm not sure what my exact relationship to Thaddeus O'Malley is yet, but it was certainly worthwhile to investigate his life, learn about timber culture grants, and to gain another clue that possibly ties him to my ancestors.

Until next time...

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© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2024. All rights reserved.

A Researcher's Aside

Did you know that HistoryGeo First Landowner's Project is available remotely through the Houston Public Library? The non-resident fee is waived for Texas resident researchers (more info here). I hopped on to see where O'Malley's land was, and then viewed it in GoogleMaps. The photo below shows some evidence of trees on the plot's southern border and in the northwestern corner. I wonder if any of these were trees that O'Malley planted? (If you are local, HistoryGeo is also available in Special Collections at the Denton Public Library.)

IMAGE: Steve Hillebrand, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, cottonwood tree stand, 2013; image, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cottonwood_stand_trees.jpg : accessed 14 May 2024).

NOTES

¹ Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Culture_Act : accessed 14 May 2024), "Timber Culture Act," last updated 9 January 2024, at 04:10 (UTC). Also: History Nebraska blog (https://history.nebraska.gov/flashback-friday-timber-culture-act-of-1873/ : accessed 14 May 2024), "Flashback Friday: Timber Culture Act of 1873," last updated 26 May 2023.

² Ibid.

³ Thaddeus O'Malley (Holt County) timber culture file #4406, final certificate number 972 (1892), Niobrara, Nebraska, Land Office; Land Entry Files, 1800-1908, Record Group 49: Records of the Bureau of Land Management, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Digital images provided by Twisted Twigs, 26 June 2023.

⁴ Bureau of Land Management, "Land Patents Search," database with images, General Land Office Records (https://glorecords.blm.gov/details/patent/default.aspx : accessed 14 May 2024), entry for Thaddeus O'Malley (Holt County, Nebraska), map image.

⁵ Thaddeus O'Malley (Holt County) timber culture file #4406, final certificate number 972 (1892), Niobrara, Nebraska, Land Office.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid.