Land Acquisition and Dispossession: Mapping the Homestead Act, 1863-1912,

Abstract

The Homestead Act of 1862 offered Americans the opportunity to claim parcels of “public land,” occupy and improve it for five years, and then receive title to it. This map visualizes over time and space the more than 2.3 million claims and 900,000 “patents” granting ownership made and issued in the half century after passage of the act. By 1912, homesteaders had transformed more than 125 million acres—more than 5% of the total acreage of the entire United States—from public lands to private property. During the same period, Native Americans were dispossessed of large portions of the American West. While not doing it full justice, this map pays particular attention to the dispossession of the lands of Native Americans through violence and claims on Indian reservations that the federal government defined as “surplus.”

Biographical Note

Julius Wilm (SFB1199, Leipzig University, Germany)

Julius Wilm is a postdoctoral researcher at Leipzig University’s Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199 “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition.” He obtained his PhD in Anglo-American History from the University of Cologne with a dissertation on free land colonization schemes in the antebellum United States and has taught at the universities of Copenhagen and Lucerne. In 2019–2020 he was the Gerda Henkel Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital History at the German Historical Institute Washington and George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, where he began work on a digital mapping project on the Homestead Act with a particular emphasis on the law’s impact on Native nations throughout the US West between 1863 and 1912.

Robert K. Nelson (University of Richmond, US)

Robert K. Nelson is the Director of the Digital Scholarship Lab and Head of Digital Engagement in Boatwright Library. He is the editor of American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History, which includes “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America.” American Panorama received the 2019 Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History from the American Historical Association and was named a tech innovation by the Chronicle of Higher Education’s in 2016; “Mapping Inequality” received Honorable Mention for the 2019 Garfinkel Prize from the American Studies Association’s Digital Humanities Caucus. Other digital history projects that Nelson has developed include Mining the Dispatch and a remediated, enhanced version of Charles Paullin’s 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. Nelson teaches course related to antislavery and slavery in the United States and about the digital humanities.

Justin Madron (University of Richmond, US)

Justin Madron is the Digital Scholarship Lab’s GIS Project Manager & Analyst. He manages all processes involving the production and organization of spatial data used in the Digital Scholarship Lab’s work. His focus is on data management and historical interactive mapping techniques. He is an adjunct lecturer for the Department of Geography and teaches courses in GIS, Design, and Geovisualization. He is also the Program Specialist/Instructor of the School of Professional Studies GIS Certificate Program at the University of Richmond.