THE HOMESTEAD ACT

VaShon Williams

Leah Crenshaw

Jordan Jacobs

Jessica Emerson

Chelsea Villanueva

THE BEGINNING The desire to move West was

always strong in American culture. “The spirit for emigration is

great.” –George Washington By the 1850’s the continental

United States stretched from sea to sea after large land acquisitions.

People longed to move West and fill in the vast empty space.

ROOTS The Pre-emption Act in 1841 let farmers

claim un-surveyed land and later purchase it.

Congressman Andrew Johnson believed people should get the land free.

Southerners opposed him because they said it favored people who would vote against slavery.

THE HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862 On May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act was

passed. It declared that any citizen or person who

was going to become a citizen could claim land.

Each land grant was 160 acres, one quarter-mile of surveyed land.

After five years, if the original filer had improved the land and still lived on it, the land became their property.

THE HOMESTEADERS The Act allowed citizens as well as immigrants who would

become citizens to own the land. Many of the people who claimed land were immigrants as

well as cattlemen, lumbermen, miners, and speculators. There were no requirements as to the amount of

equipment a person needed to have.

THE ORIGINAL HOMESTEADER Daniel Freeman and his wife,

Agnes, were the first people to claim land in the West.

Rumor is that he went to the office in Saint Louis at midnight, January 1, 1863, just so he could be the first one to claim land.

When her husband was away, Agnes was known to have given Native Americans food and goods in order to keep the peace on their farm.

SPECULATORS Many homesteaders had no experience in

farming. They would often abandon their farms, leaving

the land open for speculators to claim.

Speculators would buy or claim land then sell it for a profit.

They would also hire false claimants to claim the land.

PROBLEMS There were many

difficulties ion trying to create a farm out of wilderness.

Farmers suffered from drought, hailstorms, prairie fires, blizzards, and scarcity of water.

Swarms of locusts would completely black out the sky and eat everything in their path.

PARADISE? It may not have been the paradise that

it was advertised as, but it become home to a special group of people.

The people who came to settle the plains became a breed of settles that was more than willing to cope with adversity.

One English emigrant guide advised, “You must make up your mind to rough it.”