So yeah, I'm kind of excited for it.

Yeah, we told our cousin we were going and she was like, oh you're gonna love it.

So I guess she's been there when we were eating dinner last night in downtown Beatrice, the waitress was like, oh, so you guys are gonna go to the Homestead National Monument?

So yeah, I guess it's a big thing and Beatrice, I didn't even know this existed until a month ago.

Yeah, but I mean the Homestead act is a huge huge uh thing that got passed in the US a long time ago that's pretty prominent so I can see why it's significant and why they're, you know, they're proud of it.

Um that is here.

So Yeah, we're making a quick pit stop at Walmart, I have to get something and then we'll be heading there.

It's just a short 10 minute drive from where we're staying.

So um yeah, after that we're gonna go to the farm.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting this, but we actually have to go on a dirt road to reach this homestead site.

I mean, I know like when we go on the farm, we have to go through some dirt roads but I wasn't expecting dirt roads to go to the National Monument.

Honestly.

Yeah, this is interesting if I go through a dirt room but then we're back on the highway.

Are there cuts right now?

That's so weird.

Like that was pretty, I'm not a road to go that way.

I think it's not, I guess I'm the shortcut continue onto Highway four west then arrived at your destination.

There we go Education center.

Let's take by the education center.

Apparently.

Well who does the home stuff?

Maybe you learn about your first got.

So we just went into the education center for the Homestead um, National Monument site and actually highly recommend it because one of the staff members there personally came out and I told us the history about the Homestead Act and all that.

So I thought that was really interesting and very personal, very inviting.

High.

He seemed excited about this job, which I like and the most interesting thing that we learned was that he said most of the immigrants around here that started, um, you know, getting their own land was Germans and Czechoslovakian, which is crazy because our grandma was Czechoslovakian and our grandpa was german.

So high high chance that they were one of the first ones to get land here, not them, but they're probably, yeah, they're grand grandfather father, We'll see, we'll see.

But there is a chance that they could be part of that.

Um, and also the reason why it's in Beatrice is because um Daniel Freeman I believe started, he was the one who claimed the land birth is the very first one?

Very first one within this homestead act to do it?

And it was in Beatrice and that's why the Homestead National Monument of America is located in Beatrice Nebraska because that was one of my questions like why.

Yeah, when there's a bunch of them in the U.

S.

Yeah.

Instead where the homestead act was initiated.

But it makes sense now why they did it here.

So now we're gonna head over to the main site, which we passed earlier.

So after um he gave us a little orientation on the history that he told us about a little exhibit, they just put up.

I don't know how long it's going to be up but it's a lot of quilt art that they did um focusing on the woman's rights and like the strong woman that made history.

Um Nellie Bly was on a bomb we just learned about and then out back you could do a trail, They have a couple of trials that you could do.

That's about ones like less than a mile, The other ones about a mile, but it's really pretty back there and you can kind of see some of the sites where Daniel Freeman land plants, his land and all that.

But the rangers of the cabin's not actually out there, it's just like a sign or something.

Yeah, Freeman Brickhouse.

So we had a cabin and a brick house, but I mean 100 and 60 acres.

I'm like how big is that?

So he said it was 1.5 miles by 1.5.

So that's quite a bit of, it's quite a bit of land as a lot.

So here it is Homestead National Monument of America.

They have a cute bench swing out front and some more farming equipment and looks like, well sat sadly our ancestors don't look like they're part of the Homestead Act.

I've been searching with our family tree names and nothing's come up because we're able to go back six generations, so we're able to go back to 1824 in our family history.

Um and we put in that name and it doesn't come up anywhere.

So although if we put in names like just for genealogy, their names come up, but as far as for the Homestead Act, it doesn't, they don't come up.

So oh well this is the actual Homestead Act papers, so if you do happen to find out your family, um you know, it was part of the homestead.

Uh you know, they would have signed one of these two basically claim their land and you can print it out if you happen to find your family in there, we did it, but these are just examples of what, you know, they would look like.

So cool, final proof, final, but there he is, there's daniel Freeman.

So it's just crazy to, it says when you need water, you turn on a faucet when homesteaders needed water.

They dug wells, dan streams are carried buckets, fetching water was grueling and essential.

Uh huh.

What did you say?

Kids aren't even, Oh yeah, she's no shares.

This one's the most latest 1, 1940.

Okay.

Everything else is like late 1800s and early 19.

Yeah.

I had no idea like the homesteading ended in the 1980s.

That's crazy.

This is school days then and now back then, which looks pretty good to me.

And now.

Okay.

That's all junk food.

Like for real, like I was a little exaggerated.

Okay, nice.

Okay.

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah.

Look at baseball.

Mm hmm and study.

Mm hmm.

Very simple.

It was a blackboard chalkboard.

This is the first homesteader Daniel Freeman 1863 that says he's buried on his first day.

Hmm.

And then this is the last guy that claimed the homestead act and, and it's 74 1974 Kenneth.

The deer dwarf, a 29 year old California.

And and Vietnam veteran wanted a fresh start home studying was super hard.

So this goes by state beach state, which one was the most successful and looks like Montana be everybody harry are you?

What's Nebraska Nebraska is not far behind then.

Colorado is a good one.

And south Dakota and north Dakota Candy is going to donate some money to this moment because I really liked because they don't really try to just, it's a donation, which is great.

I just put in $500.

We just got done exploring the the homestead national monument site and we really enjoyed it.

We learned so much history.

Um I had no clue what any of that was about until I went here or you know, we learned a little bit while we were researching it.

But when you go to this site, you learned a whole lot more about what the homestead act was all about and how it affected the native americans, how it grew the west more well like on the east side, which were kind of, everyone was at the time was getting industrialized.

There's a lot of homelessness and like a lot of workers that didn't have work.

So I guess a way to get rid of the people that was overcrowding the cities was to offer them free land in the west.

So a lot of them what took up that offer and left.

Um, and started moving out west.

And also um they were advertising, you know, to immigrants to come and settle in the west, which I thought that was really interesting that they also were advertising that too.

So people from europe who came over here and you know, first they docked in the east and they're handing out I guess flyers and stuff or like they would tell people which like which lands, you know, they might want to go to.

Um, so like Nebraska, it was like, oh yeah, we have really good soil or.

So it's kind of interesting.

Um What about that?

Their ads looked like really enticing to advice on.

I like them by then.

Like I want some free land.

Yeah but it wasn't as um all rosy as they meant it to be because the weather was harsh like you had to build from scratch because all you got was land.

Yeah so you'd have to build your house but you don't have a house.

So you're basically making makeshift tents and it's just too live on to while you build the land.

So yeah as unfortunately um from the video we watched there a lot of them didn't make it.

That's how harsh it was.

So if you didn't make it you were you know very lucky that you were able to claim this land.

And also survive.

The sad part about this whole thing was that the native americans uh the indians, they lost hope.

I think they said like 70% of their land.

It might be more than that though.

Um just made these Bs treaties with the US government and the U.

S.

Government did I buy buy them And they just were like just keep on pushing the indians out and they would give them left over land that was all crappy.

So they couldn't harvest or anything there.

So then they had to rely on the americans to give them food and they said that their Children had to go to american school and they couldn't learn any native american their language so that they couldn't even communicate with their parents anymore.

Just kind of that stuff.

I mean that is really, really sad.

I was kind of tearing up about me too and that's that's genocide.

Which I'm glad they really touched upon.

It wasn't just like a little thing they touched up on.

It was like they really let you know like yeah, we basically stole their land.

Yeah, that's how a lot of the farming industry happened was from this homestead up if you're ever passing through Nebraska or in the Beatrice area, it's like about 45 minutes from Lincoln Nebraska.

So if your Lincoln Nebraska nearby, I would highly recommend stopping by the Homestead National Monument.

So it's well worth learning the history of America way to the farm now our uncle's farm.

And on the way this is route 77.

We'll pass by our grandma's house.

Well it's no longer our grandma's house.

They sold it when she passed away.

We used to go there all.

The only time I came to Nebraska, that's where he would stay at her grandma's house.

It's really in the middle of nowhere.

She had like one neighbor with lots of land.

Yeah.

I'm not exactly sure where it's at, but I know it's coming up.

Our dad used to make this dry from Omaha aw to Blue Springs.

I don't know, once a month or so.

Obviously it would come on the weekends.

Remember we would've come at night a lot of times probably because it was after he got off work and I was always like pitch dark.

I remember my mom making a comment like the twilight zone past.

Oh no, I think it's around after this corner.

That's it.

That was our grandma's house was gonna pull in a little bit, just get a glimpse of it.

This used to be all dirt right here is now it's all grounds like I don't know if anybody bought this or not.

I think someone did buy it, you know?

Yeah.

So now we're just creeping onto someone else.

Okay.

We're just little creepers.

We got lost.

We get off, proceed to the room of this was grass before I hear it was all rocks when we were younger.

It just looks so much bigger backyard but now looking at it looks small.

That's still pretty big.

I still have that though decoration way.

Yeah, look at all that hair just rolled up ready for the cows for this dirt road in a quarter mile turn.

Right.

Hey, we're all of us Almost on the farm.

We actually have to go through some dirt road.

Holy Guys, it's pretty bad farmhouse is still there.

The old farmhouse over a century old but in there like 15 years ago or something.

You are really?

How are you?

Don't, you know, I'm old, old old old, old.

Yeah, I like it because you're in your eighties right, how old are you now?

83 83 wow I've been, people don't know though.

Huh?

A lot of core.

It is a lot of corn.

How many acres of Corn is that?

15 acres there?

50.

That's that's just that's just one.

Okay, so we saw uncle area at the farm and we talked to him and it was great catching up.

He also showed us the cemetery where half of our relatives are buried and we had no idea that they were all there and we have a lot of relatives dating back to gosh, late 18 hundreds and 18 hundreds seven.

There are great grandfather high and it's all written in german the tombstone.

So that was really interesting.

Is buried there, his first wife, his second wife, which was our grandfather's mom.

And of course our aunt, our uncle Larry's wife, she passed away three years ago.

So we went to go see her site to pay some respect.