Leroy Gields

Quick Facts

Significance:

Nebraska Homesteader, one of the first Black homesteaders in Cherry County, NE

Place of Birth:

Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada

Date of Birth:

1859

Place of Death:

Cherry County, Nebraska

Date of Death:

1924

Place of Burial:

Cherry County, Nebraska

Cemetery Name:

Brownlee Cemetery

Leroy F. Gields was a forerunner of the African descended Canada-to-Nebraska homesteaders who helped establish the town of DeWitty in Nebraska’s Sandhills.

Leroy was born in 1859 in Ontario, Canada to Leroy Sr. and Nancy Ann Wheeler Gields (also spelled Geals/Geils/Guilds). Leroy and Nancy were born in Pennsylvania in the early-1800s and married in Carroll, Ohio on February 10, 1842. They moved to Canada and later joined the Black settlement of Elgin in southwest Ontario in March of 1851.

Canada was a mecca for black people escaping slavery in the United States. However, for many, their safe harbor was never their home. Mr. Gields highlights this in his 1902 Homestead application, stating that although he was born in Canada, his “parents were citizens of the United States and were there temporarily & never renounced their allegiance to the United States.”

The Gields family resided in the Elgin Settlement, also known as North Buxton. It was an organized Black community consisting of mostly former enslaved people. This area was one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad.

Education was the cornerstone of the community of Elgin. The Buxton Mission School offered a “classical education” superior to what their white neighbors were receiving. This led to the school later becoming integrated. It was in this community that Leroy grew up and learned to read and write.

Leroy Gields Sr. died before he was able to pay for their lot of land and receive their deed. The 1861 Canadian census reflects a widowed Nancy Gields with four children. In 1862, Nancy married James Green, who helped the family pay for the farm and receive their deed. Unfortunately, Green died in 1869 leaving Nancy widowed once again.

By 1880, the Gields family and several other Canadians moved to Dawson County, Nebraska. The Black homesteaders in Nebraska, especially the Canadian group, formed a tight community. Leroy, nineteen at the time, lived with his mother and his sister’s family. Their neighbors included the families of William Rann and William Small, also from Canada.

On May 2, 1890, Leroy Gields acquired his first parcel of Nebraska land. A sale-cash entry in Dawson County for 160 acres of land. He was issued patent number 3767. Around twelve years later Gields headed north to Cherry County to file a homestead claim.

Leroy Gields may have been the first African Americans to file for land in Cherry County under the Homestead Act. He claimed 160 acres of Cherry County land two years before the passage of the Kinkaid Act amendment. On June 12, 1902, he paid $14 for a Homestead application in Brownlee, Cherry County, Nebraska. When Mr. Gields filed final proof on this claim in 1907, many of the pioneer families of DeWitty had just begun to arrive.

The sandhills of western Nebraska were unable to support small farms. Therefore, on April 28, 1904, President Roosevelt signed the Kinkaid Act, an amendment to the Homestead Act of 1862. This act allowed homesteaders to claim 640 acres of land.

On July 5, 1904, two months after the Kinkaid Act amendment passed, Mr. Gields returned to the Brownlee land office. He filed a second homestead application for 480 acres of land adjacent to his original claim. The day after Christmas in 1911, he was issued his second patent. The two claims totaled 640 acres of land.

Mr. Gields witnesses for both of his claims were white neighbors from Brownlee, Nebraska. His claims likely predated the arrival of other Black homesteaders, thereby precluding them from witnessing his claims.

Although Mr. Gields never married, his census documents and homestead paperwork suggest a man dedicated to his family. In 1885, he headed a Dawson County, Nebraska household that included his mother, sister, and young niece. In 1911, he filed final proof for his Nebraska homestead. When his final claim was made, he and his witnesses reported his absence from the property to care for his sister, Matilda Robinson. She lived on a homestead adjacent to Leroy’s. By day Leroy worked his land, and by night he nursed his sister until her death in 1910.

Like many Nebraska homesteaders, Mr. Gields built and lived in a sod house on his first claim. The sod house was replaced by a frame structure when he filed final proof for his second claim. From 1904 to 1911, he increased his cultivated land from twenty acres to about one hundred acres. He used the balance of his land for grazing. The Nebraska Sandhills had no native timber, so Mr. Gields planted three acres of cottonwood and mulberry trees (about 500 trees).

Over the years, his livestock increased from one team of horses and a few chickens to six horses and three cows. In addition, corn, oats, barley, wheat, and potatoes grew on the cultivated land. About fifty tons of hay were cut each year. Improvements to the land cost about $600 or about $17,000 today.

Leroy Gields last appeared in the U.S. census in 1910. The 1920 U.S. census does not report Mr. Gields. His date of death is not known, but the Nebraska Death Index reports his death  occurring in 1924 in Cherry County. The Brownlee Cemetery in Cherry County, Nebraska, lists a headstone for Leroy Geils which does not have an engraved birth or death date.

~ Contributed by Catherine Meehan Blount

About Catherine Meehan Blount

Catherine Meehan Blount is the granddaughter of Canada-Nebraska homesteaders Charles and Hester Meehan. She is an avid family historian who has spent almost fifty years preserving family letters and photographs, researching the history of the Meehan and extended families, and sharing the family story. Her oldest Meehan uncle was married to Florence Robinson. FAN (Friends, Associates, Neighbors) research brought attention to Leroy Gields, Florence’s uncle.

Sources:

• 1861 Census of Canada, Raleigh, Kent, Canada West, Canada, Library and Archives Canada; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Census Returns For 1861; Roll: C-1039-1040
• 1871 Census of Canada, Raleigh, Kent, Ontario; Library and Archives Canada; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Roll: C-9891; Page: 22; Family No: 76
• 1880 United States Federal Census, Covington, Dawson, Nebraska.
• 1885 Nebraska, State Census, Logan, Dawson, Nebraska.
• 1900 United States Federal Census, Logan, Dawson, Nebraska.
• 1910 United States Federal Census, Loup, Cherry, Nebraska.
• “The Geals Family.” Buxton Museum. http://buxtonmuseum.com/history/20-families/Geals.html
• Harms, Ruth. Brownlee Cemetery, Brownlee, NE. 1974. Cherry County NEGenWeb Project. http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/county/cherry/Brownlee.htm
• Homestead Final Certificates. Record Group 49: Records of the Bureau of Land Management. National Archives and Records Administration. (pages will be added in albums)
• Leroy Geils - Find A Grave Memorial - Brownlee Cemetery, Brownlee, Cherry County, Nebraska, USA.
• Nebraska Death Index, 1956-1968, Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services; Lincoln, Nebraska.
• Ohio Marriage Records, 1774-1993. Various Ohio County Courthouses.
• Patent Details - BLM GLO Records – 160 acre Sale Case Entry (Patent #3767)
• Patent Details - BLM GLO Records – 160 acre Homestead (Application # 13693, Final Certificate # 4122)
• Patent Details - BLM GLO Records – 480 acre Homestead (Application # 02273, Patent # 240126)
• Prince, Shannon. “Elgin Settlement,” Published Online March 22, 2021, The Canadian Encyclopedia. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/elgin-settlement
• Williams, Jean. “Nebraska’s Negro Homesteaders Located At DeWitty,” Nebraskaland, 1969. Cherry County NEGenWeb Project. http://www.negenweb.net/NECherry/Negro.htm