Adventure Economic Opportunity Family Ties Land Freedom Lifestyle Refuge

Land For all but the wealthy, land ownership in Europe most often meant 5 acres on a hillside. In America 160 acres of rich, flat farmland was offered. The dream of land ownership, not just for one child, but for all children, was an incredible lure to families from the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Europe. In the United States, it was a lure for landless workers from the eastern and southern states, and for women. Any adult head of household, or any person who was twenty one years old and a citizen of the United States, or who was willing to file a letter of intention to become such" could obtain the 160 acres of land free of charge in return for cultivating a portion of it for five years and paying a $15. fee. The offer of land was alluring. The descriptions of this free offer to land-poor immigrants was irresistible. Quotes like these appeared in promotional literature: "rich and fertile soil and produces luxuriant grasses and crops of cereals" "remarkably fertile and always produces good crops" "its great abundance of luxuriant and nutritious native grasses, inexhaustible natural meadows and numerous pure spring lakes" "Nile's garden-an alluvial soil, level as a floor, abounding in farms of thousands of acres in extent, producing bumper crops after thirty years of continuous cropping." "Grows to the highest perfection in sizsze, crispness and flavor, almost everywhere in North Dakota, provided an abundance of moisture is provided." Poems were published and immigrant letters were printed as additional inducement. The North Dakota Magazine was conceived as a publication whose purpose was "to encourage and promote immigration to North Dakota by stating official facts concerning the state's banks, churches, land, schools, soil, and people." As generous and as wondrous as this offer of land was, it meant more than economic opportunity. Land meant status as well. In many European countries including Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, without land, your child couldn't go to college, nor did you have full rights in the legal system. You could not rise in the political system or the military or the government. Without land, a person did not have the freedom to achieve as an individual.

Related Web Sites Lewis and Clark Pioneer Family Pioneer Trails Regional Museum Prairie Public The American West US Census