Chapter 1
Homesteading in the United States Land to Call One’s Own Those who chose to homestead in the last third of the nineteenth century exhibited a special brand of courage. As John Martin Campbell wrote in Magnificent Failure: A Portrait of the Western Homestead Era, homesteaders were people who “wrestled with the land, the government, and the banks, believing in their heart and soul that they could win the long, hard-fought battle and claim the coveted prize, land they could call their own.”3 Although homesteading in the United States became legally possible only after the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, the word homestead itself, as Campbell explains, expresses a concept valued by people since Anglo-Saxon times.4 It comes from “hamstede,” an Old English word used before the year 1100. Ham means home, and stede means place. These root words remain barely altered in our word, homestead, meaning the dwelling and adjacent land occupied by a family. “To homestead” and “homesteader” have been used in the United States since 1872. The words connote the fundamental importance of having a piece of land to call one’s own as a source of individual security, sustenance, and wealth. Since the beginning of this country’s history, land has been considered a source of national wealth and security as well. A nation of farmers, the young United States needed settlers to provide food for consumption and for trade—and to spread the roots of the expanding country into the wilderness that stretched beyond the original thirteen states. The seemingly vast and almost endless lands of the continent were a currency, in Campbell’s words, used as an incentive to states, to corporations, and to individuals for many purposes. All land that was not included in the original thirteen states became part of the public domain, Chapter 1: Homesteading In The United States
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