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Depends on which period of 'history' and are you talking about the Crown claiming territories or the Virginia House of Burgesses making similar claims ~

One of the difficulties in these claims are the previous Spanish D-marks, or boundaries. Although most folks imagine the Brits claimed the Ohio Valley on the basis of their defeat of the French in the French & Indian War, the French hadn't really made a full claim of anything South of the St. Joseph River. They claimed almost all of what is now Michigan, but the most they had over on the other side of Lake Michigan were a few fellows wandering about stealing furs from Indians.

You had to go all the way up to about Alexandria Minnesota to find the Southern boundary of the line D-Marked by Spain, and that takes off to the NW to 55 degrees North. The idea was France got the watershed of the Hudson Bay but before a boundary could be marked someone had to do a baseline, and that was the baseline. The Russian/Spanish boundary was decided later as having an existence at 54'40" N all the way East to that point at the line drawn NW from Alexandria. The Eastern boundary of Alaska was decided some years later.

So, back to the NW territory ~ the OHio Valley South of the Lakes didn't really get outside of Spanish "authority", if not "Claim" until the UNited States won the Revolutionary War. Spain was our ally. They seemed to give that territory up. VIrginia rustled up some old claims they may have made and also hopped onto MIchigan, and Everything North to the Lakes and West to the Mississippi.

I guess that satisfied the Spanish ~ I've found numerous Lower Midwest counties where the first guy to prove a patent for land was a Spaniard. So I gather they stuck around and waited on civilization to come their way ~ then got their claim to land regularized.

LOts of them ran trading posts for sales to Indians and early pioneers (traders, miners, fur traders, horse breeders, meat packers, etc.).

There was a lot of stuff going on in that area before Dan Boone cut the Wilderness Trail.

NOw, when did all of that get appeneded to Lee county? I found one ref a long time ago that described the entire claim, and it was part of the more or less "non functioning fictitious but draw it on a map" Lee County. It must have itself been pulled out of Botetourt, or vice versa, but the OLD NORTHWEST TERRITORY never existed as any sort of entity until the USA sent out surveyors to run a couple of Meridians. One of them runs just East Champain Illinois through the town of Arcola ~ which, coincidentally, looks to have been a very old townsite in the middle of a 1000 arpent site that'd already been surveyed before American surveyors got there ~ they were able to meld it into the new survey because it was on the meridian they had put in.

1000 arpents is pretty much the standard size for a Spanish land grant. Dan Boone had one in Missouri in fact.

I think credit for creating "the Northwest Territor" has to be given to Americans and not Brits. But you might have more information on that.

The French "colony" at New Orleans is a special case. It passed back and forth from France to Spain several times ~ the locals were not above sailing North on the Mississippi and claiming things. Louis XIV had a sawmill at Louisville in fact ~ they cut hardwood for furniture that Boulle later turned into some of the world's most expensive furniture. Nobody bothered the French there, but their explorations of the area and French settlements like Terre Haute, Vincinnes, Versailles, Henryville and so on don't give much support to the idea that France actually claimed the whole Lower Midwest ~ more like the Spanish tolerated them and it kept out the Brits.