Receipt for Homestead circa 1864

Found this Homestead receipt in full

Receiver's office, Brownville, Nebraska on the Day 30th, 1868. Received of Daniel Freeman, the sum of six dollars and no cents, being the second half of compensation of Register and Receiver, and balance of payment required by law for the entry of (undeciperable plot) of Section Twenty-Six (26) in Township Town 4 north of Range five East containing 160 acres, under the acts of Congress approved. May 20, 1862, and March 21, 1864, entitled "An act to secure homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain" $6.00

Freeman was the first Nebraskan to meet the Homestead Act's requirement that a claim be occupied or farmed for 5 years.

Gaining More Land

There were several legitimate ways for settlers to increase their land holdings in the West. One of these was "pre-emptions" which means a settler could purchase land outright from the government at $1.25 per acre up to another quarter section of the original 160 acres.

What was wrong with that? Well, the smallest unit that they were allowed to buy was 40 acres plus a registration fee of $50. The 40 acres were consider to small too be of much use and the registration fee killed any other hopes of purchase - just too much money for a small farmer. Most farmers arrived at their new settlements with little else but the bare necessities that they would need for farming. There was no extra money for anything like registration fees.

There was also the "timber claim" which would give the settler another quarter section in exchange for planting 10 acres of timber-producing trees. The problem with this solution was that the plains' soil was so hard packed that most settler's doubted that trees could grow there.

All these ways of getting more land ended up not being benefical to the settlers. With so much land to farm, the single farmer was overwhelmed and his crops suffered.
The smart farmer started out small and farmed just enough to support his family until he could buy land AND the help it required to farm it.

Next time - time to put us up a home!

Homesteading the West

The government offered land in the West for settlers who lived on the land and farmed it for 5 years. Their was a limit on the number of acres that a settler could claim - 160 acres. Congress hoped that this would encourage small, independent farmers rather than plantations. In 6 months, Kansas and Nebraska had 224,500 acres that had been claimed. An authentic receipt issued to such a settler of that period shows a payment of $6.00for 160 acres of prairie land.

Actually land was divided into squares of 640 acres each and each square further divided into quarters of 160 acres each of which the quarters were available under the Homestead Act.

The provisions of the Homestead Act - living off the land for 5 years, were intended to keep speculators from taking huge tracts of free land and then selling them off in pieces at a profit such as the railroad baron did for $2.50 an acre.

It the these areas of remote land, the laws were near impossible to enforce, though, and land agents had so vast an area that they could not even make inspections of settler's claims. So, of course, the laws were frequently ignored or broken after a short time on the claim.

Here is an example: One federal regulation required that a settler build a 12 by 12 house with windows on his claim. To visit every house to make sure it was 12 by 12 with windows as well was just not possible. Some land sharks even build log cabins on wheels that rolled them from claim to claim. Another would build "minature" 12 inch by 12 inch cabins with sticks.


There was another way that settler's could increase their land - next time we look at pre-emptions.