This is my maternal grandmother, Golda Victoria Slagle
Forthun, in her Homestead shack in McKenzie County, North Dakota, circa
1911-1913. Born in Missouri in 1889, Goldie moved to western North Dakota in
1910 to help her older sister Nettie with newborn twins. Goldie decided to stay, and filed a Homestead
Claim as a single 21 year old woman. She
lived in a 12x14 shack, and grew flax and wheat on her 320 acres. She proved up her claims and received the
title to her land at age 25 on June 20, 1914, three months after her marriage
to another homesteader.
I love that she has her china nicely displayed, and that she
has hung window treatments to decorate and civilize her little home on that
isolated prairie. Some of those pieces of china have survived and have been passed down to family members.
Only about forty percent of those that filed Homestead Claims succeeded, and I am enormously proud that my grandmother was one of them!
Only about forty percent of those that filed Homestead Claims succeeded, and I am enormously proud that my grandmother was one of them!
It sounds like she was one of the original feminist go getters. That's a lot to take on for one person. I don't imagine in those times that she could find a mate that was willing to be a house husband. It's unusual that her claim was 320 acres. I thought that homesteads were 160 acres and that you had to buy out someone else's claim to add more acreage. I doesn't look like that shack had a dirt floor!
ReplyDeleteShe had two homestead claims; she filed for one first, and then a second one. I am not sure why she was able to do that, either, but she did! Some of the land was not productive due to natural formations (buttes, for example), so that may have been why.
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