On February 25, 1881, Reuben Murphy submitted Homestead Application #9150, which included an Adjoining Farm Homestead affidavit, for 40 acres of land located in Sevier County, Arkansas.
Gideon H. Murphy settled on his land located in Sevier County, Arkansas on
January 18, 1879 and submitted homestead application #7236 on April 4, 1884 for 160 acres of land.
Thirty-year-old Don McCormick and his young family almost lost their chance to own the land they had cultivated and worked for years in Dexter, Jefferson County, Arkansas. By March 1902, after eight years of effort, he missed an important deadline for his final affidavit for an important reason: He was locked up in jail.
From first settlement in 1873 to his testimony as part of his proof packet Hampton built an all-season log home, smoke house, corn cribs and stables, two cotton houses, plus an additional 18x18 foot dwelling; cleared and fenced 60 acres of the land for cultivating corn and cotton. He also had 2 mules, a horse and 8 head of cattle. At the time of his proof Hampton noted his family included “a wife and eight children” and that his family had settled with him seventeen years pri
During the Great Depression, Ida Mae Collier, her husband Sod, and four of their seven children left their home in Kentucky and headed west in an old Ford truck toward a new life and new opportunities. One week and 600 miles later, they arrived on a hilltop high above the Buffalo River with only 15 cents to their family’s name.
The Lindseys settled in Jefferson County, Arkansas in 1898 or 1899 but Samuel filed his homestead application on November 19,1900. Over the course of the next six years the Lindseys cleared the timbered plot for about 10 acres of crops and built a three-room house, out house, and fences worth roughly $150. Samuel formally prove up on the land at the county clerk’s office in Jefferson County on September 6, 1906 and signed the paperwork in his own hand.
Louis Mitchell Bass was born enslaved and died a land owning free man. He passed down the value of land ownership for future generations of his family.
