The Homestead Act of 1862: A Turning Point for America
Kristin Van Epps
Junior Division
Individual Website
Kristin Van Epps
Junior Division
Individual Website
Taken from http://memory.loc.gov
The Homestead Act of 1862 claimed that any person who had not fought against the United States of America, was a citizen, and who was over the age of 21 could file a claim for free land. At the most they could file for 160 acres of land but they had to fulfill certain requirements before they owned the plot of land. They were required to cultivate the land and build a house under a five year time frame. After the five years they had to pay $1.25 per acre and then the land was theirs. The Homestead Act of 1862 Section 1 read:
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration of intention to become such, as required by the naturalization laws of the United States, and who has never borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies, shall, from and after the first January, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, be entitled to enter one quarter section or a less quantity of unappropriated public lands, upon which said person may have filed a preemption claim, or which may, at the time the application is made, be subject to preemption at one dollar and twenty-five cents, or less, per acre; or eighty acres or less of such unappropriated lands, at two dollars and fifty cents per acre, to be located in a body, in conformity to the legal subdivisions of the public lands, and after the same shall have been surveyed: Provided, That any
person owning and residing on land may, under the provisions of this act, enter other land lying contiguous to his or her said land, which shall not, with the land so already owned and occupied, exceed in the aggregate one hundred and sixty acres." Thirty-Seventh Congress, Session II, Ch. 75, May 20, 1862.
Taken from http://www.lisarivero.com/2013/02/09/the-homestead-act-of-1862/