wilder $#@%! homestead
Here we go again. The James Wilder farm from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy has a new name: the Wilder Homestead. Why not have called it the Wilder Farmstead? Wouldn't that make more sense, considering the title of the "Little House" books about the place is titled:
F-A-R-M-E-R Boy?

From the dictionary:
NOUN: 1. A house, especially a farmhouse, with adjoining buildings and land. 2. Land claimed by a settler or squatter, especially under the Homestead Act. 3. The place where one's home is.
INTRANSITIVE VERB: To settle and farm land, especially under the Homestead Act.
TRANSITIVE VERB: To claim and settle (land) as a homestead, especially under the Homestead Act.

Yes, yes, yes, a homestead can be a farmhouse, etc. But the "Little House" books are about more than just any old farms, houses, and lands; the main idea in the De Smet books is homesteading as it concerned the Homestead Act of 1862. Homestead in the Ingalls/Wilder years implies filing on a homestead claim. The Wilders in the 1860s wouldn't have called their place a homestead. They would have called it (and did call it) a farm.

There are several Wilder homesteads in Kingsbury County, South Dakota -- those of Royal, Almanzo, and Eliza Jane Wilder. James Wilder neither homesteaded in New York nor in Minnesota. Charles Ingalls homesteaded in Redwood County, Minnesota, and Kingsbury County, South Dakota. The land erroneously called the "Ingalls Homestead" north of Walnut Grove (the dugout site) was -- all together now -- a PREEMPTION CLAIM.
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:34 AM