There was much delay in adopting the plan; but after summering and wintering as best they could, however, among their friends outside, the inhabitants were gratified with the news that April 21, 1806, Congress had authorized the Governor and judges to lay out a new town, build a court-house and jail, dispose of ten thousand acres near, give former owners and householders lots, convey lots to others and in general settle all details therewith connected. It was not, however, until September 6, 1806, or four months after the date of the act, that the Governor and judges held their first meeting. Interminable slowness seems to have been their purpose; plans and counter-plans, change and repeated change in surveys, their method. Lots were numbered and renumbered, streets laid out on paper, obliterated and then laid out anew in new directions and locations. Decisions were bandied about and referred from one person or authority to another, and questions of ownership of lots, like a shuttlecock, were tossed to and fro. Plans were prepared, approved, used and then discarded. Every new difficulty and scheme seemed to give rise to new and radically different lot outlines and numbers. Lots were capriciously granted and as capriciously withdrawn. Without bond or books of account, without method other than the method of not leaving any record of what moneys were received or how expended, they did as they pleased. As a result, for a year and a half after the fire there was not a single house erected, and up to May, 1807, deeds had been given for only nineteen lots. Meantime, the débris of the fire covered the site of the ancient village, the blackened stone chimneys standing as monuments of the disaster and of the incompetency or worse of those in authority. The three judges and the Governor in themselves possessed all power, legislative, executive, judicial. They made laws, built court-houses, issued scrip, laid out streets and lots, gave away lots to churches, schools, societies and individuals and were practically "Lords of the Manor of Detroit." The adoption of laws from the original thirteen States, which was all that they were authorized to do, became under their methods a mere burlesque. A writer of that period openly charged, and exaggerated but little in saying, that they would "parade the laws of the original States before them on the table, and cull letters from the laws of Maryland, syllables from the laws of Virginia, words from the laws of New York, sentences from the laws of Pennsylvania, verses from the laws of Kentucky, and chapters from the laws of Connecticut."