Letitia Carson - Oregon’s First Black Homesteader

The farm has kept us busier than usual and we are a little behind in our winter writing and storytelling work this year but better late than never to share about Letitia Carson, one of the First Black Homesteaders in Oregon and her story deserves to be known far and wide! While the main fork of the history of “pioneers” and the Westward expansion in this country is one of great loss, betrayal, and hardship for the Native peoples of this region there are also many stories of shared survival and community that overlap and are woven together across many cultures. This is one such story. 

Letitia was the first Black woman to successfully lay claim to a homestead purchase in Oregon at the height of racist exclusion laws that limited where Black folks could travel, who they could marry and prevented the ownership, sale or transfer of land. This was the backdrop of politics and racism that Letitia endured when her husband died unexpectedly in 1852 leaving her to navigate hostile government policies in order to secure her family’s rights and wealth. 

Prior to her husband’s death, the Carson family had already had their estate reduced by half of its original acreage - the historical record is not entirely agreed, but it appears that the Exclusion laws had their intended effect and provided the Oregon county clerk the option to downgrade the claim due to the “legal marriage status” when in fact it was exclusion laws that dictated who was allowed to *be* married. And so they were shorted half the allotment afforded to neighboring white families, and their immediate neighbors happily soaked up the excess acreages into their own wealth. Those same neighboring families were then directly involved in dispossessing Letitia of her land after her husband’s death in the local court system. 

Astoundingly Letitia was able to SUE her neighbors in court for damages and won multiple lawsuits albeit not for nearly the value of her losses, still - for a Black woman to successfully sue white folks in the 1800’s in Oregon was no small feat, no matter what the pay out. 

Despite these obstacles Letitia remained in Oregon and found work and housing with a local family and provided the community with midwife services in the years that followed. And during these years president’s changed, and so did national policies. One of those policies was the Homestead act of 1862 which provided nonwhite landseekers a path to land ownership mandated at the federal level. Unlike previous programs, the homestead claims did not require disclosing race which may have shielded Letitia’s successful filing of a claim in Douglas County later that same year. Not satisfied with the shaky protections afforded her in Oregon alone, she further had the claim certified by President Grant in 1868, solidifying her estate beyond Oregon’s racist exclusion laws. 

Letitia passed away in 1888 and was buried at the Stephens Cemetery in Myrtle Creek. The buildings of the estate were lost to decay or moved offsite in the following years and so no remnants of the Soap Creek home remain. During WW II the military used lands in the Willamette Valley including the Carson estate for defense purposes, though no structures were built nor were there changes to the landscape. Currently the land is held by Oregon State University within their ranching program, and Letitia would very likely have approved of that legacy as she was the Cattle Rancher of the family, and was known for her great skill and abilities working the land. 

To fully grasp the scope of her legacy consider this quote by the Letitia Carson Legacy Project, which seeks to restore Letitia’s estate as a proper heritage site with public access - “This site is unique: nowhere else in the U.S. West – possibly in the whole country – can the public visit and participate in programs on land once owned by a Black pioneer.” 

You can continue to support Letitia’s legacy and find out more about efforts to restore the Soap Creek Homestead site by clicking here. 

Sources:

https://sos.oregon.gov/archives/exhibits/black-history/Pages/families/carson-letitia.aspx

https://letitiacarson.oregonstate.edu/about-letitia-carson/