Peryle Woodson

Quick Facts

Significance:

Homesteader and schoolteacher for DeWitty

Place of Birth:

Kansas

Date of Birth:

c. 1892

Place of Death:

Unknown

Date of Death:

c. 1930

Place of Burial:

Horton, Brown County, Kansas

Cemetery Name:

Horton Cemetery

Peryle L. Woodson taught school and homesteaded in DeWitty, Nebraska.

Woodson’s greatest passion was education. During the school year, she taught the children of DeWitty’s black homesteaders in the community’s one-room schoolhouse. In the summer, she attended “normal school,” what today we would call a state college.

Woodson also homesteaded, receiving patent to her land in 1918. She mainly used her land for grazing. She likely understood the poor quality of the Sandhills soil.

She succeeded at farming, indicated by the improvements she listed on her final application. She had a 16’ x 20’ frame house, a 14’ x 18’ sod barn, a well with a pump, and more than forty pine trees and fifty-two locust trees she had planted.

Her brother, Charles Woodson lived within the DeWitty community. They two of them owned thirty head of livestock.

Peryle Woodson became a landowner and successfully farmed. She was a devoted teacher, dedicated her life to educating the children. She never married during her time in DeWitty.

After receiving her patent, she moved to Kansas and married William Bronson in 1920.

Learn more about Black Homesteading in America.