LIFE IN THE 1800's YOUTUBE STATION : PRESERVED TESTIMONIALS OF PEOPLE BORN IN THE 1800's

LIFE IN THE 1800's YOU TUBE STATION is my number one choice because it features film and audio of real people who were born in the 1800's. I was quite amazed that some of these films existed as filming then was far more expensive than it is now.

I hope these films will inspire you to do some of your own testimonials; interview on film or just let people talk.  

Titles include Civil War soldiers talking about fighting in the civil war, Bertrand Russel talking about his grandfather meeting Napoleon, once enslaved people talking about slavery,  a pardoned train robber, a witness to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Wild Wild West and many more simply fascinating accounts.

LIFE IN THE 1800's YOU TUBE STATION : Day after Lincoln's Assassination  By going to this link you will be taken to the video and be able to go to other videos on the station.  Advertising exists on the videos.

Photographer Born In 1843 Talks About the Wild West - American Homesteaders

QUESTION FOR YOU!  DOES THIS INSPIRE YOU TO RECORD YOUR OWN TESTIMONIALS FOR YOUR DESCENDENTS?

Posts like this one can be found by clicking on the label YouTube Station Recommend

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THE HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862 PROVIDED 160 ACRES OF LAND #2 FINDING DOCUMENTS OF YOUR ANCESTORS APPLICATION and ACHIEVEMENT OF LAND

The NATIONAL ARCHIVES of the United States (NARA) holds documents on the Homestead Act. There were at least 2 million claims on land through the Homestead Act in the many years it existed.  You may want to read this article from the NATIONAL PARK SERVICE.

NPS - NATIONAL PARK SERVICE UNITED STATES

The United States General Land Office was the holder of the paper documents and these documents were on paper.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES records of the BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT  Register with the National Archives so you can communicate with archivists there.

While we can easily imagine homesteaders in North Dakota, Missouri, or Arizona, let's look at that list...  People homesteaded in cities like San Francisco and Chicago too.

Using their location or address on what is a farmstead or acreage, from a census after 1862, we can send an e-mail for more information about these Federal records.

If you're wondering if these paper records are being digitalized, the answer is YES.  It's a huge project taken on by NATIONAL PARK SERVICE - HOMESTEAD RECORDS DIGITALIZATION PROJECT   (Nebraska records are competed.) 

WHAT CAN YOU LEARN FROM THESE RECORDS?

Excerpt: Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Wyoming, and Utah are searchable up to 1908 at Homestead National Historical Park at no charge. (some pay-for genealogy databases are charging for these as part of special collections.)

HOMESTEAD CASE FILES ARE TREASURE TROVES OF HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL INFORMATION.  WITHIN THEM CAN OFTEN BE FOUND INFORMATION ABOUT A HOMESTEADER'S DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH, THE NAMES OF CHILDREN THAT LIVED ON THE HOMESTEAD, NATURALIZATION INFORMATION ABOUT IMMIGRANT HOMESTEADERS, NOTATIONS REGARDING MILITARY SERVICE... THE TYPES OF CROPS PLANTED...HOMES AND OTHER BUILDINGS - AND more!

Very exciting!

This post is part of a series.  To pull up the series, click on the tag Help - Homestead Act - AWG

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THE HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862 PROVIDED 160 ACRES OF LAND #1 THE HISTORY OF LAND GRANTS FOR HOMESTEADING

You've probably heard "40 acres and a mule" is an ideal family farmstead, but consider that 160 acres of land provided that the family might be able to divide that up as children grew to maturity and another generation or two could live there. But then what?  For a small filing fee, even a freed slave could apply to homestead land.  An immigrant who was not yet an American citizen could apply and get land.  And, though women's liberation (Feminism) was the cause of few, you could apply as a woman. If there's a chance that one of your American ancestors claimed land and that can be a very interesting thing to add to your family history research project.

THE HOMESTEAD ACT of 1862 REMAINED IN PLACE FOR THE NEXT 124 YEARS and 270 million acres were claimed and settled, which turns out to be about 10% of the United States. (You could still homestead in Alaska for another decade.)

Most of the land was "unsettled" such as in the prairie lands, though today we know that notions that "nobody" lived in these places is often not correct because Native American did live there.

New settlers had to live on the land they wanted for a continuous five years and improve it.  For some this was living off the land and living in an underground house until an above ground house could be built. Cutting down trees or tilling soil could be considered an improvement.

Today I think of the modern Tiny House movement because families back in the day often lived in a house that was basically one room. Today, we seriously question if displacing people so that gentrification can take place is socially responsible behavior.

HISTORY COM - Homestead Act Basics

NATIONAL ARCHIVES GOV - HOMESTEAD ACT including some documents

Next post I'll tell you how to find these documents.

This post is part of a series.  To pull up the series, click on the tag Help - Land Grants- AWG

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image is from Graphics Fairy

VISIT SKIRBALL "CREATING THE UNITED STATES" EXHIBIT Through February 17, 2013

SKIRBALL HOME PAGE LINK   Creating the United States Exhibit amazing!  Expect low light and take some time. You'll be reading handwritten documents straight out of the history of the United States of America.  Can anyone help but compare their own handwriting to that of our Founding Fathers?  Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln.  (Also ask to see the small exhibit of Abraham Lincoln's artifacts in another gallery!)

excerpt:

"Adapted from an exhibition organized by the Library of Congress, where it was seen by some two million visitors in the library's historic setting, Creating the United States illuminates how the founding documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—were forged out of imagination and vision, as well as collaboration and compromise. While fulfilling the principles laid down by the founders has been a struggle throughout the centuries, the documents they painstakingly wrote are living instruments, essential to the evolution of America and its future.

"It is a very rare opportunity to see these humble, handwritten pages up close," wrote Robert Kirschner, Skirball Museum Director, in a recent SkirBlog post. "They are surprisingly small. The ink is faded. The penmanship itself is an artifact. Yet these documents are as eloquent and powerful as any ever written. When their faded ink was fresh, the world was ruled by kings..."

On view are original documents and autograph letters by George Washington, John Adams, John Hancock, and Thomas Jefferson; a first edition of Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1776); engravings by Paul Revere; a William J. Stone copy of the Declaration of Independence (1847); a Members Edition of the United States Constitution (1787); a facsimile of Jefferson's desk on which he drafted the Declaration of Independence; and an original copy of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (1863). Rarely has the history of American democracy been so vividly assembled for public exhibition in Southern California."

THE HUNT FOR JOHN WILKES BOOTH : HISTORY CHANNEL : DVD REVIEW by ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

Travel the escape route of President Abraham Lincoln's assasin John Wilkes Booth, as he eludes the biggest man hunt in American History to that point - April of 1865.

What I learned :

Booth may have been the shooter but he was part of a conspiracy that included several - some say many - others.

Booth heard so much anti- Lincoln talk among his confederate fellows prior to the end of the Civil War that he though he's be a hero and easily have a place to hide... So he and his conspirators thought that if they got into the South they would be safe.

David Herold was the co-conspirator who ran with Booth.

Several people - including a woman - were hung for their crime. A doctor who set Booth's broken leg was in prison for years before being granted a Presidential pardon years later.

THE WHITE HOUSE PRESIDENTIAL BIOGRAPHY OF PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN

THE WHITE HOUSE PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA SITE on PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN

You can read the entire article by clicking on that link above, but here is the part that is important to genealogists...

..."The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:


"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all." ...

This article tells you the county and state Lincoln was born in and where his parents would also be found.  (By the way, I've heard that the actor Tom Hanks is related to the Nancy Hanks family.)

LOOKING FOR LINCOLN : HOSTED HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

LOOKING FOR LINCOLN is a film about trying to find out who Abraham Lincoln really was, who he was as a man, a person, rather than as we have been told he was, rather than as he was marketed.  It is a question of re envisioning history, a difficult task.

Interestingly, Abraham, who is said to have walked rigidly and stood six foot 4 inches tall, and was considered odd looking, was quite interested in having himself photographed, aware that he needed a photo to market himself as a Presidential Candidate and President, a photo that spoke for him.  The image he finally chose was the image that was reproduced or redrawn or painted many times.

This video questions if it was ever Lincoln's Big Idea to Free the Slaves.  At the time some of those who wanted to abolish slavery also thought about sending Free people of Color to Africa, to establish themselves there.

I believe this is because the line between slavery and indentured servitude was sometimes very thin.  Someone who served their servitude and someone who was freed or bought others out of slavery.

Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tony Kushner, Pulitzer prize winning authors who've written about Lincoln and other scholars including genealogist and historical professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. speak in this film.

Film came out in 2009 produced by WNET ORG.

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CIVIL WAR LINCOLN VISITING CAMP

Perhaps you can help me identify the two men in this photograph with President Abraham Lincoln!