CLINTON KNOWLES
Clinton Knowles was issued his homestead certificate for 80 acres in current-day Federal Heights on July 24, 1893. Today, the property would be located between 96th Avenue on the north, 92nd Avenue on the south, Federal Boulevard on the west and Camenisch Street on the east.
Clinton DeWitt Knowles was born in Vermont on March 26, 1829, the sixth of nine children. His father died when he was 13 years old. Clinton married Eliza Jane Gilliland in Canada in 1850. The couple had four children.
In May of 1872, Knowles made a homestead entry in Michigan for 72.08 acres. On June 26, 1873, 40-year-old Knowles married 16-year-old Mary Ella Bailey in Michigan. The couple had five children.
In 1877, Knowles submitted final proof that he had met the requirements of the Homestead Act of 1862 by living on his Orange, Michigan homestead property for the required five years, constructing a 16’x20’ log house with one door and one window and cultivating two acres of his 72.08 acres, growing 12 currant bushes and 100 strawberry plants. He was provided a land patent and became the owner of his homestead in Michigan which was described by his wife Mary in later years as “mostly swamp.”
Fifteen years later in September 1892, Knowles applied for an additional land entry of 80 acres, the current-day Federal Heights land, at the Denver, Colorado Land Office under the Soldier’s Exemption Homestead Act. He swore that he had served for more than 90 days in the Civil War in Company D, 14th Ohio Volunteers and been honorably discharged. After the Civil War, Union soldiers could deduct the time they served from the residency requirements, and, ten months later, he received his land patent from the Denver Land Office. His entry of 80 acres at the Denver Land Office plus the 72.08 acres in Michigan entitled him to a future additional right of entry of 7.92 acres to bring the total to 160 acres allowed under the Homestead Act.
In 1892, Clinton Knowles filed an application for a pension alleging he had served in Company D, 14th Ohio Infantry. In a later pension application, reported in a letter from the Department of the Interior Bureau of Pensions, Knowles claimed pension “on account of various diseases, some ten or a dozen in number.” His pension requests were denied.
Clinton Knowles died on January 25, 1896 in Michigan. As the widow of a Civil War soldier, Mary applied for a pension. She testified that her husband Clinton claimed to her that he served in the army under the name of Smith Knowles, rather than Clinton Knowles, because he was “drunk at his enlistment.” She also testified that her husband had never lost the index finger of his left hand, while records of the War Department showed that the soldier Smith Knowles incurred a gunshot wound in battle and lost a finger. Affidavits from two local people at the time swore that Clinton Knowles was not the same person as the Union soldier Smith Knowles. A report of the War Department had shown that no Clinton Knowles had served in the Union Army. Mary’s pension was denied, she appealed to the Department of the Interior, and it was denied again.
Eighteen years after Clinton’s death, in 1914, four parties filed an application for 40 acres of land in Oregon, including the 7.92 acres never claimed by Clinton Knowles. His widow Mary had assigned her right to the 7.92 acres to a third party, seeking $15 for the assignment.
The evidence of Clinton’s right to the additional 7.92 acres as well as the 80.00 acres in Denver was based on Knowles’s sworn affidavit that he had served as Smith Knowles in the Civil War. He claimed he used the first name Smith because before he enlisted, he had made his home with someone named Elias Smith and he began to be called Smith Knowles. He swore that he, Clinton Knowles, was excited when he enlisted and used the name Smith Knowles without realizing that he had done so until his name was called aloud by the Orderly Sergeant, and he decided not to correct the error.
The conclusion in 1915 by the Department of the Interior General Land Office was that the rights of Clinton Knowles and Mary Knowles to homestead lands under the Soldier’s Homestead Exemption Act were invalid because of lack of proof of Clinton’s military service. The 1893 Denver entry for 80 acres as well as the 1914 application which included 7.92 acres for Knowles’s widow were based upon insufficient evidence establishing identity of the soldier and that Clinton Knowles was not the same person as Smith Knowles who served in the military. The General Land Office concluded that the Denver office had not thoroughly investigated the Knowles application in 1892 by contacting the Auditor of the War Department for a tracing of the signature of the soldier as it appeared on Army payrolls and comparing it to Clinton Knowles’s signature. The signature comparison showed a marked difference in the signing of the Knowles last name. The Land Office had also not called upon the Pension Bureau for any information about the soldier and his family which had previously determined that Mary was not eligible for a pension because of lack of proof of Clinton’s military service.
The Homestead Act of 1862 resulted in 10 percent of U.S. land, 270 million acres, claimed and settled. The Act was written ambiguously which invited fraud. Many false claims were approved, including the claim used by Clinton Knowles to obtain his homestead in current-day Federal Heights under the Soldier’s Homestead Exemption Act when, in fact, he was not a soldier.
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