Homestead Act

Home Alone: Women on the Great Plains

“I had gone to bed one night, but could not sleep. My father was constantly in my mind. I seemed…

3 months ago

Willa Cather: My Ántonia and the Settlement of the Great Plains

"There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made… I…

3 months ago

Black, Female, and Homesteader

It was tough to be Black in the U.S. in the era of “reconstruction” which some people frankly think of…

4 months ago

The View from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House: A True Pioneer Woman

“The days of wilderness adventure are not past!  The pioneer spirit is not dead!”  These stirring words were written by…

4 months ago

Dearfield: A Dream Lost to Drought and Depression

It’s a story with a simple, but remarkable, beginning. In 1910 a Black American entrepreneur joined forces with a legendary…

4 months ago

The Peanut Man: George Washington Carver

"I believe the Great Creator has put oil and ores on this earth to give us a breathing spell. As…

4 months ago

The Blair Colony: Freed Slaves Homesteading in the Dakota Territory

In the space of a few short months, two momentous and highly positive events occurred in America, even as the…

4 months ago

The Exodusters: The Roots of African American Homesteading

History’s ironies never cease to amaze me. The same day that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, on January 1,…

4 months ago

Homesteaders from Across the Waves: Immigrant Homesteaders

While the question of immigration is on the boil in America, and while the current season is one that should…

4 months ago

How Sears Roebuck Helped Homesteading Happen

The year was 1886. Sears Roebuck helped homesteading happen quite by accident, but it happened at a time when the…

7 months ago

Mollie Dorsey Sanford: Frontier Wife, Frontier Life

An intrepid, independent soul, Mollie Dorsey was a homesteader in her teens, a gold rusher in her twenties, worked as…

1 year ago

A Town Named Audacious and African American Homesteaders

“Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner…

1 year ago