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Date: July 14, 2009
Contact: Merrith Baughman, 402-223-3514

As part of an ongoing effort to make homesteading records more accessible, Homestead National Monument of America is pleased to announce the arrival of computer terminals at the monument. Historians and amateur genealogists will have free access to the records through footnote.com on these terminals. The records may also be accessed from your home computer by paying a monthly or annual fee to footnote.com.

Currently there are approximately 40,000 records from the Broken Bow land office in Custer County available. Volunteers from FamilySearch, the genealogical research organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have now begun to digitize approximately 300,000 from the Nebraska City/Lincoln US Land Office which operated from 1868 to 1925. These records are stored at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington D.C. In the coming years Homestead National Monument of America, in partnership with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, the National Archives and Records Administration, FamilySearch, and footnote.com hope to digitize the remaining homesteading records from Nebraska and other states. These records will be uploaded to footnote.com as they become available.

To search Homestead Records from the Broken Bow Nebraska Land Office (partnered with University of Nebraska-Lincoln), click here.

For more records/genealogical information from the National Archives and Records Administration, visit their website. Specifically you may want to look at this page entitled "Research in the Land Entry Files of the General Land Office."

*To access Homestead Records, NE on footnote.com, click here (note: you must have a subscription to view premium records).

*BLM Homestead Patent Project

Homestead National Monument of America is a unit of the National Park Service located four miles west of Beatrice, Nebraska. Current hours of operation are 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily. Winter hours between Labor Day and Memorial Day are 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. weekdays and 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. weekends. Admission to all events, exhibits, programs, and displays is free of charge. For additional information, please call 402-223-3514 or visit www.nps.gov/home.