Land in Her Own Name: Women As Homesteaders in North Dakota

by H. Elaine Lindgren, Elizabeth Jameson

Overview

Land is often known by the names of past owners. "Emma’s Land," "Gina’s quarter," and "the Ingeborg Land" are reminders of the many women who homesteaded across North Dakota in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Land in Her Own Name records these homesteaders’ experiences as revealed in interviews with surviving homesteaders and their families and friends, land records, letters, and diaries.

These women’s fascinating accounts tell of locating a claim, erecting a shelter, and living on the prairie. Their ethnic backgrounds include Yankee, Scandinavian, German, and German-Russian, as well as African American, Jewish, and Lebanese. Some were barely twenty-one, while others had reached their sixties. A few lived on their land for life and "never borrowed a cent against it"; others sold or rented the land to start a small business or to provide money for education.

For this paperback edition, Elizabeth Jameson’s foreword situates the homesteading experience for women within the larger context of western history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806128863
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	10/28/1996
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	668,255
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

H. Elaine Lindgren is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at North Dakota State University, Fargo.

Elizabeth Jameson is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Calgary and coeditor of Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West and The Women’s West.