tions of tenure, to ejectment.
Its completeness indicates its usefulness. Partial and occasional
depositions in the other cases cited help to round out the picture of
the Fair Play "code."

For example, the right of settlement included not only the approval of
the Fair Play men, but also the acceptance of the prospective
landholder by his neighbors. Allusions to this effect are made in the
Coldren deposition as well as in the Huff-Latcha case. Eleanor Coldren's
deposition, made at Sunbury, June 7, 1797, concerns the disputed title
to certain lands of her deceased husband, Abraham Dewitt, opposite the
Great Island. Her comments about neighbor approval demonstrate the
point. She says, for instance, that

... in the Spring of 1775, Henry Antes and Cookson Long, two of the
Fair-Play Men, with others, were at the deponent's house, next below
Barnabas Bonner's Improvement, where Deponent's Husband kept a
Tavern, and heard Antes and Long say that they (meaning the
Fair-Play Men) and the Neighbors of the Settlement had unanimously
agreed that James Irvin, James Parr, Abraham Dewitt and Barnabas
Bonner should ... have their Improvement Rights fitted....

She speaks of the resolution of the claims problem "as being the
unanimous agreement of the Neighbors and Fair-Play Men...."[30]

William King, who temporarily claimed part of the land involved in the
dispute between Edmund Huff and Jacob Latcha, also refers to neighbor
approval in his deposition taken in that case. He said, "I first went to
Edmund Huff, then to Thomas Kemplen, Samuel Dougherty, William McMeans,
and Thomas Ferguson, and asked if they would accept me as a
neighbor...."[31]

Land tenure policy is noted by this same William King in the case of
_James Grier_ vs. _William Tharpe_. Repeating what we have already
pointed out in the case of _Hughes_ vs. _Dougherty_, King testified that
"there was a law among the Fair-play men by which any man, who absented
himself for the space of six weeks, lost his right to his
improvement."[32] In the Huff-Latcha case, King recounts the case of one
Joseph Haines who "had once a right ... but had forfeited his right by
the Fair-play law...."[33]

The forfeiture rule was tempered, however, in cases involving military
service. Bratton Caldwell's deposition in _Grier_ vs. _Tharpe_ is a case
in point. Caldwell, one of the Fair Play men in 1776, declared that
"Greer went into the army in 1776 and was a wa