1861 Homestead Act Sesquicentennial
On May 20, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the
Homestead Act. Its purpose was to open
up the West by providing access to settlers to millions of acres of unowned
Federal land. The law provided that an
applicant could obtain free of charge farmland or a “homestead” usually about 160
acres. There were three things to
do: file an application, improve the
land, and file for deed of title. The
Act, and various amendments over the years, enabled some 270 million acres of
land to be settled by 1.6 million homesteaders. The act was discontinued in 1976 except for
Alaska where it continued until 1986.
Most of us recognize that homesteading opened up vast areas of Oklahoma,
Nebraska, and many of the Western states.
Few of us seem to know that it was very important for the growth of
Florida and West Florida, especially after passage in 1866 of the Southern
Homestead Act which permitted ex-Confederates, former slaves, and other
residents of the five public land states of the former Confederacy (Alabama,
Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi) to homestead.
Not a great deal
of research has been done on the effects in Florida, but most of the land
patents and transactions have been scanned and placed online at http://www.glorecords.blm.gov where
you can limit your search to a state, a county, and select only those lands
granted through the 1862 homestead act.
Although I have found an account that one of the first Florida grants in
the 1880s was to John Newton for land along Santa Rosa Sound where he settled
with his daughters Mary and Esther, the online patent indicates it was issued
pursuant to the 1855 land act.
Below is an example of what an 1862
homestead grant looks like (taken from the holdings of the West Florida History
Center and University Archives at the John C. Pace Library, University of West
Florida).
