“I had gone to bed one night, but could not sleep. My father was constantly in my mind. I seemed to feel that he was…
"There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made… I had the feeling that the…
Life is full of surprises, and few people would have known that better than the Americans who participated in the land rushes and homestead movements…
No one knows, or will ever fully understand, why Caroline Henderson, nee Boa, daughter of a prosperous Iowa farmer, graduate of Mount Holyoke College in…
Sometimes the best plans go awry, and for intrepid female Matilda Glover Koontz Jackson, first aspirations of pioneering could easily have ended somewhere along the…
March is Women’s History Month, and it seemed fitting to me that a homesteading woman should be celebrated. The woman I chose was arguably at…
If you have a television, you’ve probably seen the PBS series, Simple Living, or at least heard of it. If you’re a fan of the…
It was tough to be Black in the U.S. in the era of “reconstruction” which some people frankly think of as a continuation—for African Americans—of…
“The days of wilderness adventure are not past! The pioneer spirit is not dead!” These stirring words were written by one of America’s best-known homestead…
"Two days after Thanksgiving, hospitable Anna Eleanor Roosevelt…motored in a White House car from Washington to visit the Tygart Valley homestead project near Elkins, W.…
It’s a story with a simple, but remarkable, beginning. In 1910 a Black American entrepreneur joined forces with a legendary spokesman for Black innovation to…
"I believe the Great Creator has put oil and ores on this earth to give us a breathing spell. As we exhaust them, we must…