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Julia Graham's Kansas Adventure: The Diary of Julia Graham In September 1885, Julia Graham, Adeline's elder sister, embarked on the greatest adventure in her life: homesteading on the Great Plains. During the next year, this young woman of a proper Victorian family endured blizzards, prairie fires, floods and droughts while she proved up her claim.to land on the Kansas prairie. Julia was born at the Graham family farm in Berrien Springs, Michigan, on June 20, 1862. She was named for an aunt, Julia (Graham) Higby, her father's sister. She attended St. Mary's Academy at South Bend, Indiana, and Albion College in Albion, Michigan. On September 7, 1885, she and her cousin, twenty-year-old Belle Graham of Buchanan, Michigan, left for Kansas to homestead in Greeley County. Together with three other young women, Laura Rodman of Harper County, Kansas, Mary L. Campbell, and twenty-six-year-old Minnie I. Smith of Niles, Michigan (a cousin of Belle's), they lived in a dugout at the location of the future town of Tribune, then called Chappaqua. They caJled their dugout the "Palace Hotel" and offered meals and a place to sleep to travelers. The girls organized a club called the "Five Greeley Girls" with the intention of serenading all the newcomers to Greeley. It became successful and soon had a membership of seventeen girls. They organized euchre parties , dancing, ice skating and horseback riding, and they helped found the new church and school. In 1885, at the land office at WaKeeney, Kansas, Julia met a young attorney named Samuel Harlan Kelley, whom she would marry two years later. Julia Graham was one of the many thousands ofAmericans who benefited from the Homestead Act of 1862. Passed in 1862, and taking effect January 1, 1863, the Homestead Act was supported by many as a boon for anyone desiring land in the great West. Any citizen, or any alien intending to become a citizen, who was the head of a family and at least twentyone years old could acquire a farm simply by filing a claim from the vast 141 142 JULIA GRAHAM'S KANSAS ADVENTURE acres of government land in states such as Kansas. After five years of continuous residence and after making improvements to the land, such as buildings, windmills (for water), barns, fences, and the like, and then paying a registration fee of $26 to $34, a homesteader gained clear title to the property. Homesteaders could file for up to a quarter-section-160 acres-of surveyed land. If homesteaders could not stay the full five years, they could pay $1.25 an acre after six months of residency in order to receive title. .As an unmarried woman of twenty-three when she arrived in Greeley County, Julia Graham had the legal right to acquire land under the Homestead Act. Why she chose to do so in an era when many women refused even to travel without a male escort is not clear. Certainly it was not financial necessity, since her father was a wealthy and influential farmer in Berrien Springs, and her diary makes no mention of any reluctance on his part to support an adult daughter. She was not alone in her adventure, however. Thousands of women homesteaded the Great Plains, either by themselves, with other women, or as part of families. For Julia, part of the reason she chose Kansas was probably because her older brothers William and Harry were living there temporarily. Most likely, Julia thought "roughing it" in the West would be a lark, and despite many privations, her diary shows that she and her women companions had a delightful time. Greeley County, where Julia arrived in September of 1885, was named for Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune in the 1840s and 1850s, who had advised "Go west, young man." Julia took his advice to apply to her and claimed 160 acres in section 14 of his namesake county. The county enjoyed a population explosion by 1886. The 1880 census had found only three whites in the area, all hunting buffalo . The 1885 census found ten, most herding cattle and other livestock. In August of 1885, dozens of people came to settle the county; within four years, there were twenty-six hundred people. Most lived in dugouts, as did Julia and her companions. The autumn was delightful weather, according to the records; the winter was abysmal. The blizzard of 1885-86 was one of the...

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