The Homestead Act 148 years on

Searching for primary source materials can be an extraordinarily easy task when the Library of Congress does all the work for you. I view the library’s American Memory Project as a go-to-site for digitized primary source materials. However, the library’s collection of resources for researchers can, in some cases, provide one-stop-shopping for such images and documents. Take the Homestead Act, for example. Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln 148 years ago today, that legislation was devised to provide small farmers with the opportunity to purchase public land at minimal cost. The act gave 160 acres of land to any applicant, both citizens and intended citizens, who was the head of a household and 21 years or older, provided that the person settled on the land for five years and then paid a small filing fee. Under the Library of Congress’s resources for researchers section, you’ll find web guides which feature primary documents in American History. Those web guides are organized by historical period and subdivided further by particular issues or events. Browse through the Homestead Act Guide and you will find links to digitized copies of the Congressional Globe, a periodical which published the floor debate that preceded the act’s passage. You’ll also find digitized copies of articles concerning the act that appeared in periodicals of the day, and a copy of a letter written by a Canadian citizen to President Lincoln, inquiring as to how he could take advantage of the act. The photo above comes from The National Archives and shows a family posing in their the wagon that served as their home and transportation during thieir homesteading journey.

Invasion of the body snatchers

It makes me so happy when a student approaches the reference desk looking for help with a paper they're jazzed about. Such was the case when I met a student who was writing about the history of body-snatching in the United States during the 1800s. She enthusiastically described the lucrative practice of digging up graves and removing corpses from their coffins for sale to physicians, medical schools and others. We browsed through the New York Times for that time period and found a number of newspaper articles that described this practice in gruesome detail. I realize that not everyone seeking such info has access to resources such as The Historical New York Times or America's Historical Newspapers. For those folks, check out Chronicling America from the Library of Congress. This database allows you to search and view newspapers pages dating from 1880-1922. There, I found this little tidbit from Jan. 6, 1898 issue of The Valentine (Nebraska) Democrat:

Before the introduction of
this outer box it was comparatively
easy for the grave robber to make a
narrow excavation at the head of the
grave, lift the wooden lid over the glass
through which the face of the corpse
is seen, smash the glass, insert a body
hook under the chin and jerk the body
out of the grave. But now the whole
grave must be excavated and the lid
of the pine box unscrewed before the
coffin is accessible.

Neat stuff.