Last updated: December 7, 2021
Person
Benjamin Jackson
Merrick County Historical Society
Quick Facts
Significance:
Nebraska Homesteader, Buffalo Soldier
Place of Birth:
South Carolina
Date of Birth:
Around 1860
Place of Death:
Lincoln, Lancaster, Nebraska
Date of Death:
2 April 1945
Place of Burial:
Central City, Merrick, Nebraska
Cemetery Name:
Central City Cemetery
Benjamin Jackson was a Buffalo Soldier and a Kinkaid homesteader in central Nebraska whose homestead land became involved in an extortion scheme.
Benjamin Jackson was born in South Carolina around 1860. According to family history, his real last name was Simms or Simpson, but after his mother Amanda was sold on the auction block he befriended a white man named Jack and later became known as Jack's son.
He worked as a laborer until he joined the U.S. Army in 1881 serving in Company M of the 9th US Calvary during the Indian Wars. He was posted at various forts in the Great Plains and spent much of his time at Fort Riley, Kansas. He was discharged on August 23, 1886 at Fort Washakie, Wyoming after five years of service.
He worked in Omaha, Nebraska until 1890 when he moved to O'Neill, Nebraska. He later met Ida Fears and married her on April 17, 1893 in Orchard, Nebraska. Ida was the granddaughter of James Fears, a Civil War veteran and Nebraskan homesteader.
Benjamin and Ida Jackson had thirteen children: Edna Edabelle Jackson (1894), Irene Katherine Jackson (1896), Amanda Sylvanda Jackson (1897), Joseph Nelson Jackson (1899), Sylvester Kearney Jackson Sr. (1900), Samuel Matthew Jackson (1902), Rosie Maude Jackson (1905), Myrtle Grace Elizabeth Jackson (1907), Levi John Jackson (1909), Nancy Victoria Jackson (1912), Lavern Jackson (1914), Golda Caytella Jackson (1916), and an unknown child who died young.
Taking a cue from Ida's grandfather, Benjamin Jackson filed for his own homestead in Wheeler County near Bartlett, Nebraska on July 29, 1904. This was only a few months after the Kinkaid Act was signed. The Kinkaid Act allowed homesteaders to claim up to 640 acres of land in the Nebraska Sandhills. The sandy and somewhat infertile soil of western Nebraska made growing crops challenging. Homesteaders in the area supplemented farming with ranching cattle which required more land. Jackson filed for Section 1, Township 22 north, Range 10 west, 6th Principal Meridian, Nebraska (638.4 acres).
For the next six years, the Jackson family made improvements to the property. They farmed corn, potatoes, beans and sorghum on 25 acres and planted 300 cottonwood trees. They constructed a frame house with a sod addition, a hay stable, a well with a pump, four miles of two-wire fencing.
On August 15, 1910, Jackson, and his neighbors, Frank Hawley and TP Story, testified as witnesses to his proof. His homestead patent, #184251, was issued on March 16, 1911.
Shortly after proving up on his homestead, but before he received his patent, Jackson made an agreement with A. C. Thompson to exchange land. Thompson gave Jackson 40 acres of land in Oklahoma in exchange for Jackson’s 638.4 acre homestead. This deal resulted in various legal battles.
As the Jackson family travelled to their land in Oklahoma, they ran into two lawyers in Central City, Nebraska, John C. Martin and Thomas Bockes. They persuaded the Jacksons to not go to Oklahoma. Instead they offered to help him extort money from Thompson by filing a lawsuit against him. The equity suit took place in May 1912 and they won. The profit was divided between the lawyers and Jackson, with one of the attorneys receiving the 40 acres of Oklahoma land.
Following the lawsuit, Thompson claimed Martin and Bockes wrote to him saying the Jackson family was destitute. They offered to settle everything if Thompson deeding the homestead back to Jackson who would then sell it to a purchaser he had lined up in exchange for Thompson getting the Oklahoma land back. The alleged letter also asked him to loan Jackson $1100 for a mortgage. Thompson agreed to this proposition and deeded Jackson’s homestead land back to him. That same day, Jackson deeded half of his original homestead to Martin.
In November 1913, Thompson sued the attorneys asking the court to void the deed to Martin’s half of the homestead land and declare Thompson the owner of the entirety of the Wheeler County land. The result of this case was lost in the 1917 Wheeler County Courthouse fire, but the remaining records show that the land was never given back to Jackson, and he sold his half of the land to Virgil Shirley in 1914.
By 1920, Benjamin Jackson and his family moved to Central City, Nebraska where he was working as a street sweeper.
Ida Jackson died on July 16, 1933 from a cerebral hemmorage after six years of prolonged illness. Benjamin Jackson's health was also failing at this time and he was granted admission to the Nebraska Soldiers and Sailors Home in Grand Island, NE. He died of a stroke and heart complications at the Veterans Administation Hospital in Lincoln, NE on April 2, 1945 at the age of 85.
Learn more about Black Homesteading in America.
Souces:
- Patent Details - BLM GLO Records - 613.4 acre homestead
- Land Entry Case File (see below)
- Nebraska Marriage Records
- Army Register of Enlistments
- Veterans Administation Master Index
- 1900, 1910, 1920 U.S. Federal Census
- List of Cases to be Tried. 2 May 1912, 1 - Wheeler County Independent
- "District Court Adjuourned Tuesday." 8 May 1913, 1 - Central City Repulbican-Nonpareil
- "Sues Lawyers." 6 November 1913, 1 - Wheeler County Independent
- Nebraska Soldiers and Sailors Home. 9 March 1933, 8 - Central City Republican-Nonpareil
- "Funeral of Ida Fears Jackson Was Held Tuesday." 20 July 1933, 6 - Central City Republican-Nonpareil
- "Buffalo soldier to get headstone 71 years after death." 17 May 2016, A5 - Lincoln Journal Star
- "Benjamin Jackson." Profile by Merrick County Historical Museum.
- Benjamin Jackson (1860-1945) - Find A Grave Memorial