Free Blair Family presentations highlight African American homesteading in Jamestown

Free presentations at the Stutsman County Courthouse State Historic Site will put Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Blair at the center of Jamestown’s African American homesteading story. Chautauqua performer Joyce Jefferson will portray Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Blair, an African American land agent in Dakota Territory, in the courthouse courtroom on July 24 and 26 from 2 to 3 p.m. and on July 25 from noon to 1 p.m. Admission is free and the public is invited.

The program will trace the Exoduster Movement, the late 19th-century migration of thousands of African Americans from the South who were seeking land and opportunity in the Great Plains. Kansas drew the largest share of Exodusters, but many also settled in what would become North Dakota and South Dakota. The Blair family story ties that migration directly to the northern Plains through Sully County, South Dakota, where Norvel Blair sent two sons to scout homesteading opportunities in 1882. Seven Blair family members then moved there and filed homestead claims, and Benjamin Blair later became the first Black person in South Dakota to sit on a school board in 1896.

Built in 1883, the Stutsman County Courthouse is North Dakota’s oldest surviving courthouse and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the only remaining North Dakota building directly related to the activities of the 1880s statehood movement. Delegates to the state’s constitutional convention were elected there, and meetings in 1885 discussed dividing Dakota Territory.

The Homestead Act was signed May 20, 1862, and the Great Dakota Boom brought more than 100,000 people into northern Dakota between 1879 and 1886. The Jamestown presentations will land during Buffalo Days, which is also scheduled for July 24-26.