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Contribution #257 of 365
Verdal Wills
Homesteader, Farmer and Mississippi Landowner
1873–1895
The contribution
How this work helped shape America
Born enslaved in Mississippi, Verdal Wills built an independent agricultural life after emancipation and established an 80-acre family farm by the 1870s. He later developed an adjoining homestead with cultivated land, a dwelling, stable and corn crib, overcoming financial and administrative obstacles to secure his federal homestead certificate in 1895. Together, his properties created an approximately 120-acre agricultural base and a tradition of landownership carried forward by succeeding generations of his family.