Meanwhile, her original Soap Creek Valley homestead passed from hand to hand, eventually becoming part of a World War II training camp that was later given to Oregon State University. Her unprecedented accomplishments were included in no newspapers or history books, and few details of her life were remembered even by her descendants. ![]() Letitia’s name shows up only once in the media of her time, a brief mention in the Oregon Statesman announcing her case against Greenberry Smith. Letitia lived and farmed for the rest of her life on her own land.Īfter she died in 1888, her story slipped into obscurity. She became the only confirmed Black woman in Oregon, and one of the first 71 people in the country, to secure a homestead claim. On J(Juneteenth) after farming the land for five years in accordance with the act, Letitia received a certificate of ownership. She built a house, barn and granary, planted 100 fruit trees and raised cattle and hogs while serving as a local midwife. After the federal Homestead Act, which did not explicitly exclude Black people, passed in 1862, she applied for a land claim near Myrtle Creek and began cultivating a new homestead. Perhaps it was the pain of this loss that forged in Letitia the resolve to acquire a piece of land that could not be so easily taken: one held free and clear in her own name. In 1857, it was sold to another white man. This strategy won her compensation for her labor and cattle, but gave her no legal footing to reclaim her homestead. By identifying herself as David’s employee rather than his wife, Letitia aligned her case with the cause of free labor: A ruling that denied a Black woman payment for years of work would be akin to an endorsement of slavery. Believing that Black people, enslaved or free, would disadvantage white workers and non-slave-owning farmers, they wanted neither in Oregon. Most of Oregon’s settlers hailed from the Old Northwest and opposed slavery on economic, not moral, grounds. At the time, debates over slavery dominated local and national politics. Her victory, historians suggest, is testament to her tenacity, to the local respect she’d earned (enough to inspire a white man to testify on her behalf) and to the legal strategy she and her lawyer employed. Despite an all-white, all-male jury and judge, Letitia won both cases. Instead, she sued Greenberry Smith-twice: Once for wages owed, and again for the theft of her cattle. The second was passed in 1849, and the third was written into the Oregon Constitution in 1857, where it remained until 1926.Įven in this decidedly anti-Black climate, Letitia refused to accept the injustice she’d been dealt. The first, enacted in 1844, decreed that any Black person who attempted to settle in Oregon would be publicly lashed 39 times every six months. By now, Oregon had passed the second of its three Black-exclusion laws. With two cows and a calf, bedding and dishes, she and her children moved to Douglas County, a 160-mile trek south. (Courtesy of Joey Lavadour and the Letitia Carson Legacy Project at Oregon State University)Ībruptly homeless, Letitia paid $104.87 to buy back a few of her belongings. Martha Carson Lavadour, shown here, was born in 1845 on the Oregon Trail to Letitia and David Carson. A white neighbor named Greenberry Smith took control of David’s estate and swiftly dispossessed Letitia and her two children of everything they owned, denying them rights to their homestead and auctioning all their possessions-including Letitia’s herd of 29 cattle, the family’s Bible, butter churns and bedsheets. Though he’d promised to make Letitia his sole heir, he left no will. The Carsons cultivated their reduced acreage until 1852, when David died suddenly. ( Courtesy of the Letitia Carson Legacy Project at Oregon State University)Īfter five years of homesteading and the birth of another child, Adam, in 1850 the Carsons’ claim was halved to the single man’s allotment-one-half section or 320 acres-because county officials did not recognize Letitia as David’s wife. ![]() ![]() The original site of Letitia and David Carson’s homestead in Benton County, which is now owned by Oregon State University’s and part of the College of Agricultural Sciences’ Soap Creek Beef Ranch, a cow-and-calf operation used for hands-on learning and research. She became one of Oregon’s first farmers. On this land, Letitia grew potatoes, raised hogs, and tended to a growing herd of cattle. Letitia and David secured a land claim in the amount allotted to married couples: one section (one square mile) or 640 acres. ![]() and 1818, Letitia came to Oregon with an Irish immigrant named David Carson, their infant daughter Martha, who was born while on the Oregon trail near the North Fork of the Platte River in what is now Nebraska, and a cow she’d purchased en route. Born into slavery in Kentucky between 1814.
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