MamaBear ❤️🐻🏈

In 1908, during a timber boom in the Ozarks of Arkansas, a company leased 100,000 acres of land for just $1 a year. The contract included a strict clause forbidding hunting, even though families had lived on that land for decades. The Blevins family, with ten children and no legal deed, depended on hunting to survive. Wash Blevins, 51, regularly hunted squirrels for food, but when guards caught him with six squirrels, he was fined $30 or faced 30 days in jail—money he didn’t have. Before he could be taken away, his wife Nancy, 47, took action. She walked to the town of Harrison with all ten children, carrying 200 squirrel hides they had collected over the winter. She went from store to store asking if anyone would buy them, but no one was interested. Finally, she went to a bank, placed the hides on the counter, and said, “This is my deposit.” The banker initially laughed, but then realized the hides had value due to demand in the hat trade. At about 20 cents each, the 200 hides were worth $40. He paid her the full amount. Nancy used the money to pay her husband’s fine and then purchased two acres from the timber company—the very land where their cabin stood. The company retained the remaining 99,998 acres, but the Blevins family secured their home. Nancy’s receipt is now preserved in the Boone County Heritage Museum, marked with a simple note: “Deposit: 200 squirrel. Withdrawal: freedom.”