{"id":27,"date":"2008-05-20T10:41:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T10:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogybank.com\/?p=27"},"modified":"2024-07-30T14:25:06","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T18:25:06","slug":"homestead-act-may-20-1862-daniel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/homestead-act-may-20-1862-daniel.html","title":{"rendered":"Homestead Act &#8211; May 20, 1862 &#8211; Daniel Freeman 1st Homesteader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/s1600-h\/homestead-daniel-freeman.jpg\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202425961853613618\" class=\"alignnone\" style=\"float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: hand;\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/s320\/homestead-daniel-freeman.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Daniel Freeman\" width=\"242\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" \/><\/strong><\/a><strong><span style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms;\">Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. It would take effect on January 1, 1863. The first homesteader to take &#8220;the required oath and [be] given the documents which made him possessor of 160 acres of land&#8221; was Daniel Freeman (1826-1908).<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\"><strong>Daniel Freeman was born April 26, 1826 in Lewisburg, Preble County, Ohio. The son of Samuel and Phebe (Willis) Freeman. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\"><strong>This image of Daniel Freeman is from the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/enter\/gblog\">Omaha (NE) Sunday World Herald<\/a> 26 June 1899<\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\"><strong>According to that newspaper he and his family moved from Ohio to Illinois when he was 9 years old. In time he enlisted in &#8220;Company H of the Seventeenth Illinois Volunteers&#8221; and was stationed in Nebraska. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\"><strong>Freeman &#8220;had been ordered to return to St. Louis&#8221; and would not be in town when the land record office would open on January 2nd but the Recorder of Deeds James Bedford agreed to accommodate Freeman&#8217;s situation and made an exception and administered the oath at midnight the morning of January 1st so that he could leave to report in St. Louis. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\"><strong>Freeman wouldn&#8217;t return to build on his land until 1865. He literally married the &#8220;girl next door&#8221; &#8211; Agnes Suiter (1843-1931) &#8211; and they built their lives together there in Brownsville, Nebraska. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202427362012952130\" class=\"alignnone\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; cursor: hand; text-align: center;\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/s320\/homestead-farm.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a farm\" width=\"320\" height=\"164\" border=\"0\" \/> <span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\"><strong>The <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/enter\/gblog\">Kansas City (MO) Times 26 May 1920<\/a><\/em> carried an image of the old homestead. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\"><strong>What a great day for genealogists. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/enter\/gblog\">GenealogyBank<\/a> is packed with newspaper articles and historical documents &#8211; over 227 Million of them that document and give the details of our ancestor&#8217;s lives. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\">It&#8217;s great to have the details and the actual images of our ancestors and their homes. Who knew it would be this easy to find them after all these years.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Trebuchet MS;\"><strong>Give it a try for 30 days for $9.95.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. It would take effect on January 1, 1863. The first homesteader to take &#8220;the required oath and [be] given the documents which made him possessor of 160 acres of land&#8221; was Daniel Freeman (1826-1908). Daniel Freeman was born April 26, 1826 in Lewisburg, Preble County, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[938,1808,1235,1878,936,1129,944,1036,1661,431,937,1674,1097,1829,5351,1089,1161,946,945,1830,1874,630,1047,455,1038,1091,1048,5439,1238],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-abraham-lincoln","tag-ancestor","tag-brownsville","tag-center","tag-daniel-freeman","tag-family","tag-frank-baum","tag-genealogists","tag-genealogybank-2","tag-historical-documents","tag-homestead-act","tag-id","tag-illinois","tag-in","tag-james","tag-kansas","tag-kansas-city","tag-lyman-frank-baum","tag-madison-county","tag-mo","tag-ms","tag-ne","tag-nebraska","tag-new-york","tag-newspaper","tag-ohio","tag-omaha","tag-son","tag-st-louis"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99928,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/99928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}