My Trails into the Past

Jeremiah Sullivan, born in Ireland about 1811, brought his family to the United States sometime in the 1860s. [1] The first place Jeremiah, his wife, Mary, and four of their sons, including the youngest born in Michigan the year before, is found is in Franklin Township in Houghton County, Michigan in 1870. He was a miner who could not read or write. [2] Michigan produced most of the nation’s copper and the copper mining drew miners from all over the world. [3] In 1870, 57 percent of the residents in Houghton County were foreign-born and over two thousand in Franklin Township came from Ireland. [4] It is likely Jeremiah mined copper in both Ireland and Michigan. On 27 March 1873, he applied for a homestead in Todd County, Minnesota at the land office in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The total acreage was 80 acres. He signed his name with a mark, a small, dark, x. [5] What brought him to Minnesota, a distance of 375 miles from his home in Michigan? How did a man who could not read and w...

This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I have no wealthy ancestors. Most just made enough of a living to support their families. But one family might have felt great fortune at the start of homesteading in Dakoka Territory. The Gleeson family came to Dakota Territory in 1879 from Carleton County in Ontario, Canada. The family consisted of John Gleeson and his wife, Margaret Tierney, and ten children, ranging from the oldest at twenty to the youngest at two. Was it the lure of homestead land that brought them? In all, John, his sons, Martin and John J, and his daughter, Ann, all initiated the homestead process acquiring 160 acres each. They ended up purchasing their land in Sections 5, 9, and 10 before the five years was up. ...

Five of my Gleeson and Sullivan ancestors applied for and received a patent on federal land in the Dakota Territory: John Gleeson, Martin Gleeson, John J. Gleeson, Ann Gleeson, and John Sullivan.  They all started as homestead applications. Homesteading involved three steps: filing the application, improving the land, and then filing the deed of title. [1] Here, John Gleeson of Davison County, Territory of Dakota, filed an application no. 14941 on 14 Dec 1880. [2] He also filled out a form swearing to the size of his family and that he had intentions of becoming a citizen of the United States. [3] In 1880, he claimed his family consisted of his wife and six children. He, in fact, had ten children. Three of them filed their own homestead applications: Martin, Ann, and John J. Gleeson. [4] The requirement of fulfilling the homesteading steps was to improve the property. They had to cultivate crops, build a dwelling 12 by 14 feet, and live continuousl...