What Might Have Been!

I recently discovered that the FamilySearch library in Salt Lake City has name indexes for the Federal Land Tract Books. The tract books show all of the ownership claims for those federal lands that were made available for public purchase. Without a name index, the tract books are really difficult to use, so usually you just resort to looking up the final land patents from the Bureau of Land Management’s Government Land Office website.

For example, here is a list of those people who were successful in getting final land patents (ownership deeds) issued in Section 22, Township 14 South, Range 41 East in Wallace County, Kansas:The section was divided into four 160-acre quarter sections. The second patentee on the list is Gust Bjorklund. He was a brother-in-law to my great-grandfather Gust Rudeen. Bjorklund was married to Gust Rudeen’s sister, Anna Charlotta Petersdotter. The first person listed is Arthur Bjorklund, the son of Gust and Anna Bjorklund.

It’s pretty easy to find these federal land patents on the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website. But what you can’t find on that website are all the people who filed for land claims but did not succeed in getting a final patent. There were various reasons for not perfecting a patent. Maybe you couldn’t meet the requirements under the Homestead Act (living there continuously for five years, building a residence, etc.) Maybe you changed your mind because you found better land somewhere else. Maybe your spouse died – who knows what all the reasons might be.

The tract books have detailed listings for each section of land owned by the federal government, showing all the people who attempted to obtain patents, not just the successful patentees. For the section of land in Kansas shown above, the tract book shows the four successful patentees plus eight more people whose claims were either relinquished or canceled.

Without the name index, it’s a total fishing expedition to find your ancestors in the tract books. How would we know where to start looking or failed federal land applications? They might have tried to get land in a totally different county – or state! – than the one they eventually settled in. With the name index, though, you can find your ancestors popping up in all sorts of unexpected places. Just for grins, I typed “Rudeen” into the search tool and made an unexpected discovery: my great-grandfather Gust Rudeen had applied for homestead land in Wallace County, Kansas, right next to land already owned by his brother-in-law! Gust Rudeen was one of the eight people whose claim was canceled.

Here is the page from the tract book for the section of land in Wallace County, Kansas.¹ The red boxes show the successful land patents – the same four listed above. But in the yellow box, we see the canceled application of Gust Rudeen. 

So what’s going on here?

Following the ownership trail, it appears the Turner Dunlap first applied for 160 acres in the SW1/4 in 1887. His application was canceled on June 30, 1892. On March 8, 1893, a man by the name of Gust Hultgren then applied for the land (lots of “Gusts” in this section, haha) but his application expired on July 20, 1901. On January 30, 1902, Gust Rudeen put down his $10.00 application fee to get the land. On August 12, 1904, his application too was canceled. That same day, though, his nephew Arthur Bjorklund applied for the land, and he eventually succeeded in getting the final patent on June 26, 1911. 

This raises so many questions about the Rudeen family! Were they so desperate to own land that they were seriously considering moving out to Wallace County, Kansas in 1902? At first this I was really freaking out about this! But then I figured out the real reason for his application. In order to apply for homestead land, you had to be at least 21 years old. Arthur Bjorklund turned 21 on August 11, 1904. On the very next day, August 12, he made his application for the land – the same day that his uncle Gust Rudeen relinquished it.

I think the truth is that Gust Rudeen did his sister’s family a favor by putting in an application in 1902. Gust Bjorklund couldn’t apply for a second homestead – the law limited you to just one 160-acre homestead property. But he wanted his son to have the neighboring farm. So he had to find a trusted to person to file an application and sit on it until Arthur turned 21. Gust Rudeen was the man he trusted to do that.

There’s an interesting side note to this story. In the tract book, it says that Arthur’s quarter section became “designated” by the Act of March 3, 1915. This was a change to the law that allowed homesteaders to acquire up to 320 acres instead of just 160. I suspect that Arthur applied to have his land so “designated” so that his and his father’s properties could be combined into a single ownership (though I don’t know who bought out who). 

Here’s a photo of the Bjorklund family. Arthur is at far right.

“Kansas, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89WS-1DMP?view=explore : Dec 4, 2025), image 691 of 780; United States. Bureau of Land Management. Image Group Number: 007112891