UNITED STATES, EXTENSION or THE TER RITORY OF THE. Prior to 1781 only six of the thir teen original States, viz. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, :Maryland, and Delaware, had exactly defined boundaries. Of the remaining seven States, some to ex tend to the Pacific Ocean and others to the 'Mis sissippi River. The States with inexact bound daries ceded to the General Government their claims to lands west of their present limits in succession, as follows: March 1, 1781, New York; March 1, 1734, Virginia, the cession including the. territory which now forms the State of Kentucky and the parts of the States of Ohio, Indiana,. and Illinois which lie south of the forty first parallel, Virginia, however, reserving from this cession for military-bounty lands the entire territory, 6570 square miles, between the and Little Miami rivers, from their sources to the Ohio River; April 19, 1785, Massachusetts, in- eluding her claims to territory west of the pres ent boundary of New York ; September 14, 1786,, Connecticut, the cession being the territory west. of the Alleghanies between the parallels of 41° and 42°, except a strip 120 miles in length lyings; directly west of Pennsylvania retained for the• benefit of her public schools and later known as the Western Reserve (q.v.), which she ceded to the
United States in 1800; August 9, 1787, South Carolina, the territory ceded being a strip of land about 12 miles wide, south of the thirty fifth parallel and extending along the southern boundaries of North Carolina and Tennessee to the Mississippi; February 25, 1790, North Caro lina, the territory ceded constituting what is now Tennessee; June 16, 1802, Georgia, after re ceiving that part of the cession of South Carolina lying within her present limits, ceding all be tween her present western boundary and the Mis sissippi, and between the South Carolina cession and the thirty-first parallel, embracing a large part of what is now Mississippi and Alabama. The foregoing cessions secured to the General Government nearly all territory ceded by Great Britain, not included in the original thirteen States, as in the main now bounded. On Novem ber 25, 1850, the State of Texas ceded all her claims to lands west of the twenty-sixth meridian west of Washington ( 103d Greenwich) and be tween latitudes 32° and 36° 30'.