Homestead Act

Great Plains in the 1880s. The land was very cheap there. The farmers lived in soddies. However, the Southern Great Plains rarely got rainfall. Therefore, some farmers and there families moved away. However, the government passed the Enlarged Homestead Act. It said that if anyone could hang on for three years, they would receive 320 acres of land. World War 1 was good for the Plains farmers. The farmers were able to sell wheat at a very high price to Europe. However, there was a downfall. Along…

the United States suffered a severe drought in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Kansas. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their land or raised cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dryland wheat. As the demand for wheat products grew, cattle raising was reduced, and millions more acres were plowed and planted.…

Homesteading: Do You Know What It Really Means Today The various Homestead acts, yes there were more than one, essentially gave an individual, called an applicant, ownership of land, with stipulations attached, without paying cash for it in the United States. The first act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. A person was given a grant for 160 acres or 65 hectares, which was considered a one quarter section. People from all walks of life applied for the grants, and this…

Methodology I have always had a fascination with homesteading. It began with my father’s stories of growing up on a homestead and his memories of the animals and the garden. His stories bloomed into reading autobiographies of homesteaders, such as The Good Life by Scott and Helen Nearing, and Hard Times in Paradise by David and Micki Colfax. These stories are what led me to live in rural Hawaii where many collect rain water, grow our own food, and have learned to be less consumer driven. While…

The modern homesteading community, is one of people seeking self-reliance and independence for a myriad of reasons through small scale independent farming and food preservation and crafting. The homesteader is more that just a famer and embodies a broad and contradictory spectrum of motives, affiliations, and material practices. (Wilbur, p.154). As Rebeca Kneale Gould states “the homesteader has converted to a new way of life in which the practice of everyday life is a chosen ‘answer’ to a…

Introduction Modern homesteading, also known as the back-to-the-land movement or self sufficient living, is made up of a community of people seeking independence through small scale independent farming, food preservation, and crafting. The above-mentioned were the “modern worker, who dependent on wage or salary, lodged in city flat or closely built-up suburb and held to the daily grind by family demands or other complicating circumstances, has watched for a chance to escape the cramping…

Spiritual Practice in America, she shows how the homesteading experiences and practices could be compared to those of traditional religions. She notes that there is what could be called a religious conversion experience that happens when people visit a homestead. They are inspired to become homesteaders and began to look for more information. The autobiographies of other homesteaders become like a sacred text with guidelines of how to live this lifestyle. “Many have well-stocked libraries of…

In Sholem Asch's novel Uncle Moses, Asch makes use of vivid written descriptors to effectively portray Uncle Moses' character to the reader. Uncle Moses begins as a butcher in Kuzmin, but then immigrates to America and became a wealthy factory-owner. In his newfound social standing, he employs many workers and helps their families financially, which inflates his view of himself as a caring uncle. Later, he tries to wed a young lady named Masha, who loves another man named Charlie. Masha…

incident that occurred on July of 1892. The incident involving the steelworkers and Pinkerton, so called detectives, from the steel manufacturing plant in Homestead Pennsylvania came to be known as “the deadliest clash between workers and owners in American labor history” (Standiford, 28). After the dust had settled on The Battle of Homestead, as it was later called, fourteen men had lost their lives and countless more injured form the event. Standiford books speaks of the rag to riches story…

Andrew Carnegie was born on November 25, 1835 in Dunfermline, Scotland. His father Will Carnegie, his mother Margaret, and his younger brother Tom immigrated to united State as a penniless immigrant seeking for a better future after his father faced an economic burden due to the advance of mechanization. They settled in Allegheny city, a suburb of Pittsburg where Carnegie’s mother had relatives. At the age of thirteen, Carnegie started his first job as a bobbin boy to help his family survive.…