The Homesteader: Past To Present

(Norwegian settlers in 1898 N. Dakota by their homestead, a sod hut)

What is homesteading? My first exposure to Homesteading came in the 1980’s from a TV series called “The Little House on the Prairie”. In the show, a family claimed a homestead and depicted life in a small agrarian community. In order to understand what the term means, we need to look back in history.

During the 19th century, much of the United States was unsettled. The U.S. government enacted several laws that gave an applicant ownership of land, typically at no cost. More than 270 million acres of public land was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders. This was equal to about 10% of all land owned by the government. Most of the “homesteads” were west of the Mississippi River.

According to the National Park Services book "About the Homestead Act", most of the Homestead Acts required the applicant had to be the head of the household or at least twenty-one years old. They had to live on the designated land, build a home, make improvements, and farm it for a minimum of five years. The filing fee was eighteen dollars. Immigrants, farmers without their own land, single women, and former slaves could all qualify.

Homesteading has been around long before the United States enacted the “Homestead Acts”. In 1690, Philosopher John Locke published the Second Treatise of Government. Locke saw the "mixing of labour" with land as the source of ownership via homesteading. He writes: “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”

The end of homesteading in the United States came in 1976. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act ended homesteading. The only exception to this new policy was in Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986. According to the US National Park Service, the last claim under this Act was made by Ken Deardorff for 80 acres of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. He didn’t receive his deed until May 1988. He is the last person to receive title to land claimed under the Homestead Acts.

Governments may have formally stopped the “legal” act of homesteading, but its ideals are far from dead. A small but resilient group of people still live a life style of self-sufficiency. I have decided to live the homesteader’s life as much as possible. Please join me as I share with you the life of the “Modern Homesteader” on Steemit. This blog will be focused on the following topics; Home remedies, self-defense, emergency preparedness, gardening, hunting and spiritual growth. In homesteading, I find dignity, financial independence and freedom. Do you have what it takes to be a “Modern Homesteader”?

Sources:
Locke, John (1689). The Two Treatises of Government, Bk II, Chap 25, Sect 27
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_principle
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/homesteader
"AMERICAN HISTORY The Homestead Act - Creating Prosperity in America"
"About the Homestead Act" - National Park Service.
"The Last Homesteader". National Park Service. 2006.
Images:
June 24, 2015 By Homesteading https://homesteading.com/chicken-coops-raising-backyard-chickens/