Telling the Story of Postbellum America -- Single Female Homesteaders on the Great Plains: Mina Westbye
Amy
M. White, M.A.
Homesteading in the best of times
was a challenging prospect on the American Plains, but the “attraction” for
settlers was the prospect of carving out a life and farm from nothing.[1] To turn the arid frontier
grasslands into a home, working farm, and business was a long process. It is
said that homesteader women “suffered” the most on the plains, often living
their lives under immense pressure and isolation.[2] Without the communities,
families, and socialization women had known in their homelands or back east,
moving to the plains brought loneliness and difficulties unknown to them
before. Men typically left their wives on the homestead while going to town,
usually at a considerable distance, to buy supplies and enjoy saloons and
shopping. Women remained on the homestead to care for the children, farm
animals, gardening, and household.
For married homestead women, a great
deal of responsibility was placed on them, and they were “expected to make
homes, bear and raise children, cook, clean, construct, and care for clothing
and contribute to the economic success of the farm.”[3] However, women indeed
became the backbone of the rural communities on the great plains. The outlying
“neighborhood and kinship networks” were forged and “sustained” by the women,
who often arranged, prepared, and facilitated gatherings on the plains.[4] On the plains, facilities
like “churches and schools were the most visible” example of community members’
connection and they too were sustained by women.[5]
Nevertheless,
many homesteader women found “optimism, enthusiasm, and pride in creating homes
and farms” on the Great Plains.[6] Even single women took to
the “adventure” that was the opportunity of homesteading. The Homestead Act had
opened the opportunity of homesteading to Men, widows, and single women. If
they lived up to the guidelines laid out, they could acquire up to 160 acres of
land at a minimum fee. For Single women they were breaking away from the
“stereotypes” of women of their day; as homesteaders, they were able to make
their own decisions, including the choice to pursue homesteading, which made
all the difference in their psychological state, versus blindly following the
choices of one’s husband.[7]
After
just three years in the U.S., Mina, Olive, and Marie decided to become
homesteaders. It seems the decision was made rather quickly, as in late August
1903, Mina “filed her first naturalization papers, which was a necessary step
before an immigrant could claim land under the Homestead Act.”[12] Together with her
cousins, Mina made the journey from Minneapolis by train to Minot, North Dakota
and on August 27th, 1903, “all three women claimed land in Blooming
Valley Township,” in present Divide County, North Dakota.[13]
The
Homestead Act of 1862 permitted Americans and immigrants with intent to become
citizens the right to “claim land in the public domain.”[14] With just $10 each, the
single female cousins claimed 160 acres of land a piece. The regulations of the Homestead Act required
claimants to live on the claim for a set amount of time, make improvements to
the land, and finally seek proof by the General Land Office (GLO), whereby an
inspector would inspect the claim and with the payment of fees, a title would
be provided to the homesteader of the property. This “dream” of procuring
nearly “free land” and the promise of railroad accessibility brought thousands
of people to the northern plains.[15]
Like
Mina and her cousins, some of these homesteaders were single or widowed women.
In fact, “North Dakota had a relatively high rate of women homesteaders in the
early 1900s,” making up between “5-18%” of all homestead claimants.[16] The typical homesteader
pursued the opportunity of claiming the land for one of two reasons, to obtain
cheap land for their families and to farm or to procure land as an economic and
financial investment. Mina made it no secret that she was a part of the latter
bracket, solely seeking the land to gain capital and the independence that
investment would provide.
Once
the filing was complete, the cousins traveled to their land and began the
“process of meeting the legal requirements to acquire the title.”[17] Olive and Marie had
claimed adjoining parcels of land, while Mina’s was a bit further away but
still close enough to afford “frequent visits.”[18] To ready the land and
make improvements, building a shelter took precedence above all else. Mina had
a typical plains Tar Shack built on her property, to which she affectionally
called her “villa” and described it as practical and “cozy.”[19] Mina then resided on the
land from August 1903 to “early December, when she returned to Minneapolis” to
secure wages to further her investments on her land.[20] In Minneapolis, Mina
worked as a domestic and seamstress, then returned to North Dakota in mid-March
of 1904. By the fall of 1904, Mina had met the then “six-month residency
requirement” and began filling out “the paperwork for final proof” seeking the title
to the land.[21]
As a homesteader, Westbye had “transformed the prairie into agricultural
cropland” and established residency.[22] Mina’s land had been
transformed from a rolling expanse of prairie, with “no shade trees,” to a farm
with “ten acres of wheat and flax, a garden, and a well in 1905.”[23] Mina undoubtedly “hired”
people to work the land for her, and during her time on the plains she read
avidly, walked everywhere, visiting the cousins, and gardening.
During
the fall of 1904, Mina began corresponding with Mr. Alfred Gunderson, whom she
met in Minneapolis, a fellow “Norwegian immigrant and [a] graduate of Stanford
University,” studying botany.[24] Through these letters,
Mina and Alfred became more than acquaintances, while Mina continued to provide
“rich” documentation of her life on the plains as a single woman through
letters and amateur photography.[25] Mina’s photography stands
as an essential representation of the numerous photographs that Norwegian
immigrants sent back to their families in Norway, depicting life in the new
country and depicting the lives of “ordinary people,” which their ancestors
commonly refer to as “America-photographs.”[26]
Mina’s
life was unique from other settlers of the plains because her life on the
plains required her to spend time away from that land to earn wages to procure
work and materials to invest into the land itself, which the railroad allowed
her important accessibility to travel and return at different times of the
year. Mina’s work away from the homestead points to a necessity of a single
woman obtaining an income outside agriculture, to pay others to break the land,
plant the fields, and dig the well.[27] Some women did do the
work themselves, but Mina chose to do it differently. Once Mina had met the
legal requirements of “improving the land,” she began the process of making
“final proof” of the land in November of 1904.[28]
Obtaining
proof of the land by the GLO for a single woman was not quickly done, as
demonstrated by Mina’s elongated experience. It seems that due to Mina’s long
absences from the claim, the GLO was hindered in expediting the processing of
her claim. She waited more than a year and heard nothing back from the GLO. In
the end, Mina used “gendered arguments, including [her] marital status, to
explain why” she was away from the land for such periods, and eventually more
than a year later, the GLO inspector stated that Mina was in fact “acting in
good faith,” and she secured her title to the land in 1906.[29] Upon receiving her title,
Mina attempted to sell he
r land while studying photography after a falling out
with her beau and then sold her land in 1908; Mina then decided to move back to
Norway. Upon her return to Norway, Mina “studied photography in Oslo and
eventually opened a photography studio,” all done through the capital she
acquired through her land sale. Eventually, she rekindled the relationship with
her beau Mr. Gunderson and Mina then returned to the United States where they
married, “built a home in the Catskill Mountains and raised a family.”[30] Through it all, Mina
Westbye’s experiences stand as an important example of single women
homesteaders at the beginning of the twentieth century and the greater extent
of Norwegian immigrants’ experiences in the northern plains.
Bibliography
[1] Danbom, David B., Sod Busting: How Families Made
Farms on the Nineteenth-Century Plains, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2014, 33.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid, 45.
[4] Ibid, 74.
[5] Ibid, 81.
[6] Ibid, 44.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Lahlum, Lori Ann, "Mina Westbye: Norwegian
Immigrant, North Dakota Homesteader, Studio Photographer, "New
Woman"," Montana The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 60, No. 4,
Winter 2010, 4.
[9] Between 1836 and
1915 no fewer than 750,000 Norwegians emigrated to North America as part of a
broader wave of European migration that has been called history’s largest
population relocation.” (Lien)
[10] Lien, Sigrid. "The 21-Year-Old Norweigian
Immigrant Who Started Life Over by Homesteading Alone on America's
Prairie." What it Means to be American, Hosted by the Smithsonian and
Arizona State University, Dec. 15, 2019:
https://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/journeys/the-21-year-old-norwegian-immigrant-who-started-life-over-by-homesteading-alone-on-americas-prairie/.
[11] Lahlum, 5.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid, 6.
[15] Ibid, 7.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid, 8.
[18] Ibid, 9.
[19] Ibid, 8-9.
[20] Ibid, 8.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid, 9.
[24] Ibid, 8.
[25] Ibid, 9.
[26] Lien.
[27] Lahlum, 10.
[28] Ibid, 11.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid, 14-15.
Comments
Post a Comment