Document Deep Dive: How the Homestead Act Transformed America
Compare documents filed by the first and last homesteaders in the United States
- By T.A. Frail and Megan Gambino
- Smithsonian magazine, May 2012, Subscribe
One hundred and fifty years ago this month, President Abraham Lincoln launched the greatest land giveaway in U.S. history and destined Ken Deardorff for one of the longest nights of his life.
The Homestead Act, signed by Lincoln on May 20, 1862, embodied a radical promise: free land for the masses. Until then the federal government had generally sold its unoccupied property, favoring men with capital. As a result, by the 1840s big farms were consuming smaller ones, and efforts to change the system were gridlocked as Congressional debate over slavery intensified. The problem became so pressing that Representative Galusha Grow, a Pennsylvania Republican, warned in 1860 that the nation was courting “a system of land monopoly—one of the direst, deadliest curses that ever paralyzed the energies of a nation or palsied the arm of industry.”
Then Lincoln was elected to the White House, and 11 Southern states seceded. Absent opposition from plantation owners, Congress passed the Homestead Act.
Beginning January 1, 1863, any U.S. citizen—or intended citizen—who had never taken up arms against the United States could claim up to 160 acres and take title by living and farming on the land for five years. Total charge: $18. Female heads of household were eligible. African-Americans would be eligible after they became citizens under the 14th Amendment in 1868. Native Americans would be displaced.
From the moment the first homesteader, Daniel Freeman, stepped foot into his local land office in 1863 to apply for 160 acres in Beatrice, Nebraska, to the day in 1979 when the last homesteader, Ken Deardorff, of Alaska, filed for a title to his 50-acre claim, four million settlers—men and women, former slaves and new immigrants—attempted it. About 1.6 million succeeded, homesteading a combined total of 270 million acres, or 10 percent of the country.
The Homestead Act, says Blake Bell, historian at the Homestead National Monument in Beatrice, Nebraska, “set the stage for the rapid development...into the global power we became after World War I.” Nor did it stop there: The law’s basic provisions remained in force until 1976—and 1986 in Alaska.
Though a century and thousands of miles separate Freeman and Deardorff, as homesteaders, they underwent a similar legal process. The following documents give a glimpse into each of their experiences “proving up,” or testifying that the changes they made to their land demonstrated a commitment worthy of an official title to it. The documents are annotated based on conversations and email exchanges with Bell, Robert King, Alaska’s state archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management and homestead historian, and Deardorff himself.
Daniel Freeman's Proof of Improvements
Daniel Freeman's Homestead Certificate
Ken Deardorff's Proof of Improvements
Ken Deardorff's Homestead Patent
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Comments (15)
In 1966, my father, a small town general practitioner, discovered a provision in the Homestead Act that allowed a person to ship all of his household belongings and livestock by railroad for purposes of relocating. And so it was he loaded up a boxcar in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, filled on one side with all of our furniture, and the other side containing his prized Tennessee Walker hunting horses and hound dogs. He hired a hunting buddy to ride inside the boxcar and tend the "livestock" as per regulations. Destination: Moscow, Idaho. We then followed along via station wagon for our first trip across the great "Wild West". I still have the original Bill of Lading from the railroad. Total cost: $200.
Posted by Margaret Fitzgerald on October 6,2012 | 09:18 PM
Hello In regards to obtaining information abaout our ancestors who homesteaded out west. Here is the answer. You can write National Archives Trust Fund (NWCT-1F oom 14N-2) 700 Penn. Ave. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20408 I obtained all the documentation about my grandparents. The cost was $40.00. It was so exciting to get all this information. Best wishes!
Posted by Adelina N Healy on September 20,2012 | 01:25 PM
Correction: My grandfather homesteded out in South Dakota not Oregon. Thank you!
Posted by Adelina N Healy on September 20,2012 | 01:15 PM
My grandfather and grandmother homesteaded in Gillette, Wyoming in approximately. I think they would have moved there in approximately 1915-1919(?). My grandfather died in 1933 and on his deathbed asked my grandmother to promise never to sell the homestead. This was a hardship because she was left with three small children to raise alone but she honored his request. I would like to locate a copy of the Homestead documents signed by my grandfather related to his ownership of the Gillette, Wyoming homestead property. I would love to give the documents to my uncle for his 90th birthday in December. He was raised on the Gillette, Wyoming homestead. How would I locate copies of the homestead documents signed by my grandfather. Thank you to anyone who can provide assistance.
Posted by Catherine Belli on July 5,2012 | 09:50 AM
The Homestead Act was not all sweetness and light. Millions of Americans were lured West to arid pieces of land, put themselves into debt and struggled desperately to make their claims pay out. Many went bankrupt, committed suicide and were forced to leave their stakes and return, penniless, to urban areas to make a living. Even after WWII, the Homestead Act was used to provide stakes to returning vets -- but all the good farmland was long gone by that point. These poor vets discovered what the earlier homesteaders had learned -- that it was impossible to make much of this land pay. I recommend the excellent book "Bad Land," by Jonathan Raban, which documents the second homestead act in the 1920s.
Posted by Abigail McGregor on June 22,2012 | 10:32 AM
History is just that, history. Even if you don't agree with how the winners of any conflict won. It's never correct to forget history just because something was said or done that someone finds distasteful. Our nation's culture at the time of the Homestead Act was what is was, no denying that. As stated in the article, the Act allowed for a poor, hard working individual to stake a claim and carve out a place for his family, and in history. History also tell us things like the Homestead Act eventually lead to other cultural and social changes over time and create a country where most of the world's down trodden population strive to go and make a better place for themselves and their families.
Posted by Vicky Gallagher on May 9,2012 | 11:41 AM
I have just finished wading my way through the comments on your article on the Homestead Act and homesteading. Two comment: why is so little written about the Homestead Act? I have searched on line, at the local library, in history books generally and - you name it - and have found little to nothing about the Homestead Act, which I see as an important turning point in the history of this country and especially, of western expansion. Any ideas for research? I am interested because I believe my great-grandfather was a homesteader in Iowa, in the year i863. Comment #2: Have any of the writers who feel we are, as one put it, being chased down the road to socialism, considered the Homestead Act as socialistic? And what if it is - it has worked, and it has by and large benefited this country and many many people who, like my great-grandfather, were trying to find the means to make a home and raise a family.
Posted by Jeanne Broce on May 7,2012 | 12:36 PM
Fascinating article. My great Uncle Joe and his family Homesteaded in Perry Twp South Dakota in 1877. Often wondered how they survived the hardships, living in a soddie,the weather. There were six children in the family and so they all had chores to do. They were tough people. The first house they built was destroyed by a tornado and they survived the Great Depression. The old man lived to be 95 years old and his son lived to be 99! My relatives fit into your description as the old man was American born in New York state. They went to the Dakota Territory from a farm in Canada leaving in 1865 with four children. They had 2 more children along the way in Iowa. They knew how to survive in those days.
Posted by Doug Gilfillan on May 5,2012 | 02:11 PM
Lets not go bleeding heart, my grandmother was native American, so Native Americans stole land from each other, and killed each other, just as did the Romans, the Greeks, the Germans, so on so on so on, its the history of the world, we can not dwell on that, we rose as a great nation, but with the bleeding heart liberals appologising for everything our nation has done, we are falling, Im not saying we should not learn from our past, but to dwell with unfounded guilt is crippling our nation, my grandmother held no grudges, she said her people fought as valient warriors, and lost as valient warriors to greater warriors, an honerable defeat.
Posted by Joshua Crissen on April 29,2012 | 09:16 PM
My grandparents and father homesteaded in the early 1900 out in Eagle Butte, SD. Is there any where I could get a copy of the document.
Posted by Adelina N Healy on April 25,2012 | 12:47 AM
My GG Grandfather homesteaded 160 acres in Oregon. How can I get a copy of his Homestead application?
Posted by Marie K. Scovell on April 24,2012 | 11:57 PM
Native Americans displaced. My ancestors were chased from Virginia to North Carolina to Georgia, to Alabama and finally to Oklahoma, and then in the 1930s were 'chased' in an old car to California. Now our President, thru his spend and tax policies, wants to chase us even further down the road to socialism. When will enough be enough?
Posted by Stephen Downey on April 23,2012 | 11:39 PM
"Native Americans would be displaced." This bold, stand alone statement ranks alongside the glorification of LBJ and Lincoln in "The Conscience of the King." The sentence and the article title are puns to be understood by Washington insiders who would kill off poor Americans in the same way that the U.S. Army killed off the Indian People?
I'm sorry I just renewed my subscription. Even the "The Smithsonian" has sold out to our owners and controllers.
Posted by bill wald on April 23,2012 | 10:40 AM
Need to know how many and tribal identify of native americans that were displaced from each state? How? To Where? What compensation, if any, was given to them?
Posted by James Kulas on April 22,2012 | 03:58 PM