Sometimes all you need to know is that there was a Homestead Act
of 1862. Sometimes, you want to understand the life of a
homesteader, someone like Adeline Hornbek. A single mother of
four, Hornbek made her own way for her family and became the
owner of a prosperous ranch in Colorado's Florissant Valley.
earned 1,093 United States patents, a record that still stands.
He kept a cot in his New Jersey lab so he could work through the
night when inventing. In his autobiography, Up From Slavery,
Booker T. Washington wrote, “ I had the feeling that to get into
a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into
paradise.” He founded Tuskegee Institute in 1881. Susan
LaFlesche Picotte's dream was a hospital to care for her people
on the Omaha Indian Reservation. The first American Indian woman
to practice medicine in the United States, she graduated from
medical school in 1889 and realized her dream 14 years later
with the first privately-funded reservation hospital. People
make history. Find them here