{"id":4524,"date":"2023-09-23T21:31:37","date_gmt":"2023-09-24T01:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/?p=4524"},"modified":"2023-09-23T21:31:37","modified_gmt":"2023-09-24T01:31:37","slug":"the-homestead-act-and-its-impacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/?p=4524","title":{"rendered":"The Homestead Act and its Impacts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Saturday, Sep 23 2023<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Road video and map<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today was, again, a mainly driving day as I headed to Nebraska’s capital, Lincoln. There are several highly recommended tourist stops along I80 but they seem to all deal with the Pioneers and, I felt, were unlikely to add significantly to my knowledge. I decided to visit the Homestead National Historical Park<\/em> in Beatrice which is about 40 miles south of Lincoln. This allowed me to get off the Interstate and drive some pleasant two lane roads through agricultural countryside with virtually no traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Homestead Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, was designed to encourage people to populate the huge area west of the Mississippi by allowing anyone who was over 20, a head of household or a recent immigrant on the path to citizenship to claim 160 acres (65 hectares) of public land. If they built a dwelling, cultivated crops and lived there for 5 years they were given free ownership of the land. Once the civil war had ended it was expanded to include public lands in the confederate south which allowed freed slaves to participate. However, previously enslaved people faced obstacles, such as lack of documentation to prove identity and legal knowledge to ensure ownership remained in the family when the original claimant died. Also Andrew Johnson, who became President after Lincoln’s assassination, gave many black homesteads to white plantation owners who claimed to own the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The act came into effect on Jan 1st, 1863 and Daniel Freeman is believed to have filed the first claim at midnight on that day The historical park is run by the National Park Service on the land he claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many claimants chose their plots from survey maps at the land office without viewing the land first. Freeman carefully selected his plot and the presence of this creek was an important factor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Nebraska was one of the most claimed western states. The hole in this map at the park shows the percentage of land that was given to homesteaders.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While the act had its desired effect for many settlers it was devastating to the Native American tribes. Native Americans had lost land due to the Indian Removal Act and treaties they had been coerced to sign that restricted them to reservations. They believed the land belonged to the community, not individuals. When congress passed an act to expand homesteading to reservations (with the intention that tribal members could own land) the treaties were broken and settlers claimed the 60% of reservations that was not claimed by members of the tribes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This dwelling was built by a homesteader in 1867 just 14 miles away from the park. As the family grew it eventually was home to 12 people. A big family was a great help in terms of clearing and farming the land.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Homestead Act was repealed in 1976 for the lower 48 states but, in Alaska, homesteading continued for another 10 years. The last homestead claim to be granted ownership was made by Kenneth Deardorff, a Californian and Vietnam veteran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The tractor used on Kenneth Deardorff’s homestead in Alaska before he sold the land in 1993.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday, Sep 23 2023 Road video and map Today was, again, a mainly driving day as I headed to Nebraska’s capital, Lincoln. There are several highly recommended tourist stops along I80 but they seem to all deal with the Pioneers and, I felt, were unlikely to add significantly to my knowledge. I decided to visit … Continue reading The Homestead Act and its Impacts<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[97,3],"tags":[98],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4524"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4537,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions\/4537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}