Place

Hodgeman County Colony, Kansas

Quick Facts
Location:
Hodgeman County, Kansas
Significance:
Black homesteading colony
OPEN TO PUBLIC:
No

In the years following the Civil War, black homesteading colonies dotted Kansas including one in Hodgeman County. Although slavery was abolished, the reconstruction in the South resulted in violence and economic dependency for many black residents. Because of this, many black people living in Southern states fled to the west in a movement called the Great Exodus. The people were termed Exodusters.

John F. Thomas, minister of the First Baptist Church of Lexington, Kentucky was the rallying force behind the Hodgeman Colony. Under his leadership, The Morton Town Company filled articles of incorporation in 1877 and the site was selected (Section 27, Township 22, Range 23). The town was about fifty miles south of Nicodemus, Kansas another black homesteading community.

Thomas P. Moore led the migration and settlement of the town. On March 24, 1878, 107 black Kentuckians from Lexington and Harrodsburg arrived in southwest Kansas. Upon arriving in Kinsley, the nearest town with a railroad stop, they walked 30 miles to the future location of Morton City.

The group of Exodusters made land claims under the Homestead Act of 1862, but the town never materialized. According to The Republican, by 1879 they had “put up a commodious frame building for a store and built half a dozen sod houses and dug-outs on the town site. But they could not make their farms and raise crops and build the town at the same time. They could not comply with the town site law…” (June 18, 1879, page 2)

Some of the migrants moved to Jetmore, Larned, Kinsley, and other towns along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad. But a second group of around fifty settlers joined the homesteading colony in April 1879.

Mrs. George Perry stated she “never could have imaged that there could be so beautiful and broad and free a country in the world, so different from anything she had ever seen or thought of in Kentucky. It seemed as if God had prepared it for colored people that they might come out from a land of trouble and live and enjoy it forever.”

Subsistence farming was the goal of the community. Because of this the black homesteaders tended to plant less cash crops and had larger gardens than their white neighbors.

A dream of free land spurred them on, but the lack of rain during 1878-1880 meant it was a tough time to be farming in southwestern Kansas. The drought was even more devastating for these new settlers since they had missed the bounty of 1877. It had been a great year for crops and the reason the had chosen the location.

Over time, most of the settlers moved away though some remained and lived out their lives on their farms. Many of the colonists saw the Hodgeman settlement as the first step toward freedom and economic improvement.

In 1932, the Hodgeman County News reported “one by one the ranks of our early day Colored Settlers are being thinned out until but few are left to recall their hopes and aims of earlier years, but, as we look back over the life of Mr. Harris we can well say, ‘Another Good Man has Gone.’”

Additional Information

Homestead National Historical Park

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Last updated: September 8, 2021