Blog intro by Angela Gupta, UMN Extension Forester
I’m writing this blog introduction on International Women’s Day, March 8, which seems fitting. MN Women’s Woodland Network recently stumbled across this great webpage from the U.S. National Park Service, as it says:
Women homesteaders and the Homestead Act helped lead the way to women’s suffrage. Homesteading women created an atmosphere where ideas about women’s rights could flourish. More than 100,000 women received land in their own name under the Homestead Act, paying taxes on their land – leading many to raise the cry “no taxation without representation!” as they pushed for the vote.
The Homestead act, signed in 1863, enabled these women, and many many other families, to settle the west and midwest United States and caused the largest change to our forests since the retreat of the last glaciers. The Homestead act required families to settle and stay on the land. In order to prove a family had settled, the law required the management of trees. In forested areas like north and eastern Minnesota, that meant removing trees to plant agricultural crops. In the prairies of southwestern Minnesota, it meant planting trees to prove settlement. Trees were always involved. Agriculture policy has long influenced forest land management.
Another interesting feature of the women that settled their own land via the homestead act; by and large they couldn’t be married. Since marriage was the socially expected norm for women in that era, these women were often outliers: brave and independent. Imagine deciding to settle in a region that until 1837 was “Indian land” where indigious people vastly outnumbered white settlers. Minnesota was only granted statehood in 1858, five years before the Homestead Act was signed, which was only a year after the Dakota War of 1862. As the Homesteaders moved into Minnesota, they likely encountered displaced and dejected Dakota and Ojibewa people. By the late 1800s, 37% of Minnesotans were foreignborn. So presumably many of these women were not only single or head-of-household, but they were also navigating a foreign country likely in a different language while trying to survive.
As spring starts to emerge across the land I think back to the cold, dark, freezing and deadly winter that precedes each Minnesota spring and am very thankful for my cozy house, central heating and the bounty of my local grocery store. Enjoy this wonderful tribute to the women that changed our land and history forever.
Women Homesteaders - Homestead National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)(nps.gov)
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