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Widows & Orphans


Students at the White Hall Soldiers' Orphan School
Source: Cumberland County Historical Society
Carlisle, Pennsylvania


The ends to which a rancher might go to acquire land were quite extensive. Some used a provision of the amended Homestead Act that allowed Civil War veterans or their widows and orphans to acquire land. These ranchers would locate war widows and have them file for the land, then get the land from the widow, who often never stepped foot on the property.


White Hall Orphan's School, Cumberland County, Pa.
Source: Cumberland County Historical Society,
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
In one inventive, if reprehensible, scheme, land speculator John A. Walters of Lincoln took particular advantage of the Homestead benefit. After the Civil War, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin was moved by the suffering of the children in his war-ravaged state who were left without parents. In response, he created state-funded orphanages and schools for these children, hoping to better their lot in life.

Run your mouse over the handwritten map
to see the borders of Parmele Ranch
created from orphans' pieces of land.
Source: Custer County Historical Society		 In 1884, John Walters went to White Hall Soldier’s Orphans School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and acquired legal guardianship for 21 orphans, all under the age of 13. He then went to Custer County, Nebraska, where he took out homesteads for each of the 21 children. Then, early in the 1890s, all 21 children, represented by Walters, sold their land to Emmet Seybolt and then George A. Seybolt for two dollars an acre. The Seybolts subsequently sold the lands to C. H. Parmele, completing the Parmele Ranch.

Run your mouse over the handwritten map to see the borders of the Parmele Ranch, 7000 acres in 11 sections .

The overlay more clearly shows some of the orphans' names for whom Walters supposedly bought the land that eventually ended up as the Parmele Ranch. Notice that one area in the lower left corner had already been sold to Seybolt.


It would only be later that laws would be passed to prevent the exploitation of children. At the end of the 19th century, what Mr. Walters did was quite legal.

Find out more about these schemers in the video, Widows & Orphans.