An intrepid, independent soul, Mollie Dorsey was a homesteader in her teens, a gold rusher in her twenties, worked as a seamstress and a cook. She…
"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…
History’s ironies never cease to amaze me. The same day that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, on January 1, 1863, the Homestead Act went…
“Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable.” – George…
Clearly, it was not the best day in Daniel Freeman's life. He'd been on the trail for over three weeks, and the weather had been…
“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…
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…
In the space of a few short months, two momentous and highly positive events occurred in America, even as the Civil War was at its…
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…
Have you ever wondered why, when so much of the homesteading lifestyle deals with the practices and philosophies of the past, no comprehensive history 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…
