Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

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.