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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Homesteading, early days
  • Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 15:03:28 -0700

Here's an excerpt from an interesting site at: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/may20.html

By 1900, homesteaders had filed 600,000 claims for 80 million acres. Most pioneers settled in the Western Plains states. Experienced farm workers from other states or Europe, they abandoned family and community ties for the isolation of pioneer life gambling that conditions would favor prosperity. Louise Lane Trace was 16 when her family arrived in Nebraska. After navigating a series of disasters, they reached their homestead in the spring of 1866. Over seventy years later, WPA interviewer George Wartman recorded Mrs. Trace's memories of that difficult time:

Mr. Lane had arrived at his homestead with 30 head of cattle and several horses. He put out sod corn which gave all indication of being a wonderful crop, but the grasshoppers took the entire crop. There was an abundance of wild grass, but no way to harvest it. After winter set in with no feed for the stock they commenced to suffer. The horses became so weak from starvation [that?] they were not fit for traveling so Mr. Lane would walk 15 miles to what they called the "Dutch Settlement" and now known as Swanton, pay $2.00 per bushel for corn and carry a sack full on his shoulder making a thirty mile…round …trip for one sack.

"Mrs. Wm. Trace," Lincoln, Nebraska, November 29, 1938.






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