Homesteading Or Genealogy - Either One Is a Tough Row to Hoe
Picture a covered wagon with wheels lumbering across the prairie, grass bending in the gentle spring breeze, and the sun warming the earth. The passengers in these prairie schooners dreamed of making this untamed land their own, knowing that there would be hardships and hard times, but they held on to the belief that they would succeed. For the most part, that's the way we think of the homesteaders making their way out to a parcel of land they hope to call their own. Did it really happen that way? Not so much. Settling the west was a business - a very big business. Although pioneers crossed the Great Plains in the 1840s and 1850s heading to Oregon, Utah, and points west, a few did stay and begin setting up housekeeping in the 1850s and 1860s in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The big land rush began, however, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The roots of the rush were the result of two major pieces of legislation passed during the Civil War. The first was the H...