#17 Land. Lois Jasper Lloyd

#17 Land. 52 Ancestors in A Year

My ancestors all owned land.  Many families continued to own the land for several generations as it was inherited by heirs.  Some of the ancestors purchased their land, while others homesteaded.  

Why own land?  Owning land was a dream sought earlier generations since it gave them freedom to  earn their destiny.

There were many opportunities to own land in the United States.  But it was unusual for a woman (single or married) in the 1860’s to buy her land.

But that is exactly what my great great grandmother, Lois Jasper Lloyd did.  She had an amazing life, being born in 1841 in Kentucky, immigrating to Missouri and then traveling on the Oregon trail in 1854 when she was just 13 years old.  Marrying Albert Gallatin Lloyd in 1858, she moved to Walla Walla county, Washington in 1859 with a 2 month old baby, to a crude log house with a dirt floor and no windows.  But she had  brought garden seeds from her home in Oregon.  

Lois H. Lloyd-A young woman

Since Lois arrived too late to break ground into a garden, she used the dirt from gopher holes.  Gophers throw out dirt as they make their tunnels so next to their hole, is a pile of loose dirt.  Hard-working Lois, planted her seeds into that dirt.  I suspect that she probably had to haul water to those hills of dirt.  But her garden grew and she saved seeds for the next year’s crop.

From this meager start, Lois continued gardening, even raising a larger garden and selling produce to miners and others passing through.  Lois even darned socks for miners who would stay a night at their house, known as the “half-way house”.  She put that money in a little sugar bowl on the top shelf of her cupboard.  By1865 she had accumulated enough money to buy 120 acres of land east of her house.   A little later she sold one of her young mares in 1866 to buy another 40 acres adjoining her first purchase.  

The Patent for the 120 acres signed by President Abraham Lincoln

The Patent for 40 acres purchased in 1866, signed by President Andrew Johnson

Her husband, A. G. Lloyd, had purchased 160 acres and received the patent in 1865.  

Lois worked hard for her purchases but she had satisfaction knowing that it was hers alone.  Albert G. Lloyd died in 1915.  Lois continued to operated the farm with her sons until moving from the farm into Waitsburg.  Lois died in 1930.  She lived to see the land harvested by cradle and flail, reaper, binder, a header and thrasher and finally the combine harvester.