Last week, I got a title on the book I wrote this past summer.  THE CATTLEMAN’S UNSUITABLE WIFE will be released in May, 2009, and will be the featured western in Harlequin Historical’s 60th Anniversary line-up.   Yee-haw!

You might recall I wrote a blog about researching for this book.  Despite what the title implies, it’s about sheep.  The heroine’s family are Basque sheepherders, and her brother is the bastard son of a cattleman.  Sheepherders and cattlemen clashed and made for some mighty strong feuds back in the Old West days, and it was fun to write Trey and Zurina’s story.  Now that the book is finished and winging its way into the edits stage, it’s time for me to think about my next project.

This one will be a Christmas anthology that I’ll be sharing with our own Elizabeth Lane and Carol Finch.  Our theme is “Coming Home for Christmas”, and it’ll be released in October, 2009.  Since that will be only 4 months after THE CATTLEMAN’S UNSUITABLE WIFE, I wanted to give Zurina’s brother his own story while he’s fresh in readers’ minds.  I’ve paired him up with another character in THE CATTLEMAN’S UNSUITABLE WIFE, the lovely and slightly inebriated Allethaire.  

Which of course, threw me into another bout of researching.  With Allethaire being wealthy and having no need to work to support herself, I had to give her something to do.  That something was community service.

Men got all the glory when it came to settling the frontier, but it was the women who worked behind the scenes to give their towns personality and life.  They volunteered countless hours shaping their communities into a place where their children would be educated and their families would prosper.  As one Utah pioneer claimed, the men “built the bridges and killed the bears,” but “women worked just as hard in their way.”  A Colorado woman in the 1800’s wrote how “women were the backbone of the church, the backbone of the family, they were the backbone of social life–everything.”

Whether they lived on the range or were comfortably settled in town, housewives banded together to raise funds to create and maintain institutions that would fill educational, religious, medical and social needs.  They formed women’s groups (or clubs, if you will) that accomplished amazing things–and empowered them all along the way.  Here’s a few of the women’s clubs I found:

The State Housekeepers Society of Bozeman, Montana.   With a motto of “Our Kingdom is Our Home,” these ladies preserved history and organized endeavors to improve lighting on city streets and in parks.

The Helena Improvement Society kept sidewalks clean, tended trees and trails and formed a city park system.

The Deep Creek Ladies Aid of South Dakota worked hard to collect money to build a Norwegian Lutheran Church.   They furnished and maintained the pews, the pulpit, the altar ring, and baptismal font, then went on to support the parochial school teachers, bought books, then zealously and without fail attended every service.

The Montana Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs improved playgrounds and housing for blacks, and eased racial tensions when needed.  Most notably in the Northwest, their gatherings enriched the black woman’s life through church groups, literary, art and musical groups.  Also, self-improvement societies, auxiliaries, sororities and reform associations. 

The Morman Female Relief Society formed on behalf of Brigham Young’s desire to keep his followers self-sustaining.  These women organized silkworm associations which taught how to raise the worms, then weave the silk into fabric for their own dresses, handkerchiefs, stockings, thread and lace.

Of course, I can’t not include the women’s temperance groups like The Women’s Temperance Prayer League in Portland and the infamous Women’s Christian Temperance Union who fought and risked their lives to eradicate alcohol and saloons.  Likewise, groups similar to Seattle’s Female Suffrage Society who became politically involved to give themselves and their sisters the right to vote.

Ladies clubs continue to thrive and are as diverse as the women themselves.  Ranging from junior leagues to sports associations, women’s groups have made America the fine country it is today!

So how about you?  Are you currently in some kind of a woman’s club?  What has been your favorite?  Your most meaningful?  Most fun?

For me, the first one to come to mind is La Leche League.  Back when I was having my babies, I was a die-hard nursing mom.  Those years were happy ones, when I was surrounded by other moms just like me with the same ideals for raising and caring for our babies.  

I promised in my last blog I would talk about Fanny Kelly this week. She’s one of those great heroine stories.She was taken by the Indians in 1864 when she, her adopted daughter, her husband and six others formed a small wagon train to take them from Geneva, Kansas, to Idaho. Unaware of rising hostilities between Indians and settlers, the party chose to turn down the offer to join a larger train and continued west in their own company.

“Over hundreds of acres these blossoms are scattered, yellow, purple, white, and blue, making the earth look like a rich carpet of variegated colors. Those blooming in spring are of tender, modest hue, while those of later summer and early autumn are clothed in gorgeous splendor. Solomon’s gold and purple could not outrival them.”

But the beauty disappeared two months after their journey commenced. On July 12, they were attacked by a war party of 250 Indians. The attack came apparently after the military killed some Sioux who had murdered an Army engineer. The army commander mounted their heads on poles near the camp as a warning. Feeling that they were to be exterminated, the Sioux turned hostile.

They attacked the small Kelly camp without warning. Three men were killed at the outset. Two were wounded. Fanny’s husband and one of the ex-slaves escaped. Fanny and her little Mary along another woman and her seven-year-old son were taken captive. Her husband was some distance away, and when he saw what happened and realized the futility of attacking, he decided to ride for help and try to ransom his wife and child.

Fanny tells her story in her “Narrative of My Captivity among the Sioux Indians.” About the initial capture, she wrote: “It was a pitiable sight to see the terrified looks of our helpless children who clung to us for the protection we could not give. Mrs. Larimer was unconscious of the death of any of our party. I did not tell her what my eyes had beheld because I feared that she simply could not endure it, but I strove to encourage and enliven her, lest her excitement would hasten her death or excite the anger of our captors.”

The chief apparently approved of her courage. “He presented me a wreath of gay feathers from his own head, which I took, regarding it merely as an ornament when in reality, as I afterward learned, it was a token of his favor and protection.”

But she didn’t know that, and she and Mrs Larimer feared that when the Indians prepared for departure, “we would be quickly disposed of by the scalping knife, or even should we escape for the time, we saw no prospect of release from bondage. Terror of the most appalling nature for the fate of the children possessed me, and the horrors of Indian captivity that we had ever heard crowded on our minds with a new and fearful meaning – the slow fires, the pitiless knife, the poisoned arrows, the torture of the famine and a thousand nameless phantoms of agony passed before our troubled souls filling us with fears so harrowing that the pangs of dissolution compared to them must have been relief.

“It may be thought almost impossible in such a chaos of dread to collect the soul in prayer, ‘When woe is come, the soul is dumb That Crieth not to God.’”

They were placed on horseback, young Mary clinging to her, and Fanny conceived a plan to save her daughter. The shadows had darkened as they rode, and she whispered into Mary’s ear that they were just a few miles from their camp. Fanny had dropped pieces of paper that she’d been able to grab from her wagon, and now she told her daughter to “drop gently down and lie on the ground for a little while. . . then retrace her steps to the camp.” Surely someone would be there.

The child agreed and the plan worked, at least at the moment. She later discovered Mary had been killed by Indians. But at that moment, Fanny’ knew of no other way to save her daughter.   Her feelings were conflicted. “The agony I suffered as indescribable. I was firmly convinced that my course was wise – that I had given her the only chance to escape within my power; yet the terrible uncertainty of what her fate might be in the way before her was almost unbearable.”

In my next blog, I’ll tell you more of Fanny’s seven months with the Indians and how she went from captured drudge to honored guest and finally celebrated heroine in Washington D.C.

I had planned to blog about superstitions today but I came across an image that so captured the essence of the heroine in my next book, WILD 3, it redirected my focus. This image of my mountain woman, Maggie (aka Mad Mag), reminded me of why I truly love writing westerns. One of my main draws is the freedom to create heroines who had to be as rugged and daring as their heroes. The women who settled the west were as hard-working, adventurous and courageous as their men folk–even more so by my account, as many were also rearing children amid establishing a home, working the land, tending stock and training a husband

History is bursting with dynamic western heroine inspiration.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• Cattle Kate - Ellen Liddy Watson, the first woman lynched by vigilantes in Wyoming. She was a widow who worked hard to build her own herd and purchase her own homestead. She was lynched by a rival cattle baren along the Sweetwater River, Wyoming, in 1889, during the height of the Wyoming range wars. 
• Elizabeth Simpson Bradshaw - A widow, with five children, the youngest only 6 years of age, walked across the American prairie pushing all her family possessions in a handmade, wooden handcart. After much tribulation, more than could ever be told, Elizabeth, with all of her children still alive, arrived at her destination, the Salt Lake Valley. There in the West she made her home, reared her children, and is honored by her posterity.
• Mary Fields - Born a slave in Tennessee in 1832, this tall, powerfully built woman was ambitious, daring and liked a good fight. With no formal education, she forged her way to Ohio and on to the Montana Territory. Declaring herself the protector of the Ursuline nuns at St. Peter’s Catholic Mission near Cascade,Montana, Mary defended those she loved from predators on two legs as well as four. She delivered the mail by stagecoach, never missing a day until she was almost 80 years old.
• Margaret Borland Heffenan - By 1873 she owned a herd of more than 10,000 cattle. She was said to be the only woman known to have led a cattle drive.
• Cathay Williams - Female Buffalo Soldier. When Congress passed an act authorizing the establishment of the first all Black units of the military, later to become known as “Buffalo Soldiers”, Cathay Williams, a former slave, decided it was time to join the Army. In November of 1866 she enlisted in the 38th US Infantry as William Cathay. Since there were little or no medical exams required, Cathay was able to successfully (at least initially), pull off this disguise.
• Calamity Jane -  ”Heroine of the plains” was born Martha Jane Canary. A wandering American frontierswoman, she dressed like a man and was even a pony express rider. She frequented bars, telling stories of her adventures with other “personalities” of the west during the mid to late 1800’s.
• Pearl Hart - First Known Female Stage Robber In Arizona Territory After being captured for the stage robbery, she said that she “would never consent to be tried under a law she or her sex had no voice in making, or to which a woman had no power under the law to give her consent.” She had become a strident voice for “women’s emancipation.”
• Nellie Cashman - “The Angel of Tombstone”  Pretty as a Victorian cameo and, when necessary, tougher than two-penny nails, the extraordinary Nellie Cashman wandered frontier mining camps of the 1800s seeking gold, silver and a way to help others. A lifelong, devout Catholic, Nellie convinced the owners of the Crystal Palace Saloon (one of whom was Wyatt Earp) to allow Sunday church services there until she had helped raise enough funds for construction of the Sacred Heart Church. She was also active raising money for the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, the Miner’s Hospital and amateur theatricals staged in Tombstone. She was famous for taking up collections to help those who had been injured or fallen on hard times, especially miners.

Many of these women remind me of my grandmothers–both ventured westward at a young age with little more than a suitcase and their sheer rugged will to build a better life for their families–both are wild west women in their own right and a basis of inspiration for all my heroines.

Do you have any favorite wild west heroines, either legendary, fictional or personal inspirations? For fun, what is the name of the heroine in the book you’re reading now?

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Throughout American history until the early twentieth century, women’s clothing was restrictive and cumbersome.  Corsettes, stiff petticoats, crinolines, hoop skirts, bustles and busks were all designed to cinch, pad, flounce and lift, sometimes in layers, often in uncomfortable fabrics, draped and shirred and pleated to add even more weight.  Some of those styles were downright unhealthy!

One of the first women who chose more comfortable clothing was British-born Fanny Kemble, daughter of touring actors who married a plantation owner.  Critics were outraged over Fanny’s loose fitting pants that she wore under a skirt that came to her knees.  But coming to her defense on the pages of her Senecca, NY newspaper The Lily was Amelia Bloomer.

Born Amelia Jenks, she married Dexter Bloomer in 1840.  Dexter was an attourney and a publisher of a county newspaper.  When Amelia first wrote for his paper, she took up the cause of temperance.  In 1849 Amelia took over The Lily, a temperance newspaper.  Influenced by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia addressed issues of women’s rights, educating women about unequality and the possibility of social reform.  The paper became a model for other suffrage periodicals. 

Amelia, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, adopted the mode of dress sometimes called the new American Costume.  The style was also referred to as Turkish pantaloons.  When Amelia staunchly defended the clothing, other papers picked up the story, referring to their clothing as bloomers.  Eventually Stanton and Anthony agreed to forego wearing bloomers so that their cause wasn’t seen as a mere dispute over clothing.

You might recall another woman who started a trend nearly a century later: the lovely Kathryn Hepburn wore trousers with stylish disregard for what was considered appropriate.  However Hepburn’s popularity and intelligence soon aided a style revolution that the country–and women–were ready for.

Later Amelia and her husband moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio and in 1855 to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where she continued to write and speak on the issues of women’s rights.  When age caught up with her, she left the battle for equal rights to her successors. 

Throughout the Village of Seneca Falls, NY there are bronze statues and monuments that bring the women’s movement to life.  One in particular is a real car stopper: Life sized sculptured figures of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Amelia Bloomer.  I would love to see these in person!

Not only are these women shining examples of the courage and tenacity it took to win equal rights for the sexes, but they pointed out the foolishness of nonfunctional clothing and changed the way people thought about fashion.

Thanks for dropping by Wildflower Junction!  I’ll draw a name from your comments today and send the winner a copy of my December anthology, THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS.

LEARN MORE ABOUT AMELIA BLOOMER

    ORDER THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS

By now, schools across the country are back in session. A year ago this time, I lamented here on Petticoats & Pistols how my last little chicky had entered college, and that Doug and I were empty-nesters after 31 years. Now that Amy is in her sophomore year, I’ve adjusted well to a quiet house (and yeah, I like it, as many of you said I would. In fact, I like it alot. LOL).

Still, it’s strange not to watch the weekly ads for specials on spiral notebooks, pens, pencils, erasers and backbacks. I miss that anticipation of school starting up again, visiting the uniform store (my daughters went to parochial schools and thus wore unforms), and stocking up on new underwear, socks and sturdy tennis shoes.

Historical writer that I am, and being the mother of two schoolteachers, and of a daughter employed at Creighton University, I’ve been thinking of what going back to school was like for nineteenth century students and their teachers in the West.

Up until the Civil War, teachers were usually male, but the country’s economy forced many of the men to leave teaching for higher paying jobs. Women well knew the importance of education for their children and refused to let them grow up uneducated on the expanding frontier.

Girls barely older than fifteen years gathered up their courage and answered the cry for schoolma’ams. If they didn’t already live in the region, they headed west and filled those desperate slots in schoolrooms often crude, cold or hot, and always small.

She had to convince her County Superintendent she was of good moral character, and that she would teach school in ‘a faithful and efficient manner.’ She had to be single–and if anyone knows why she couldn’t be married, I’d love to know. Fillies?? To earn a coveted teaching certificate, the women had to attain at least a 70% (considered lenient by today’s standards) on their exams in the following courses:

Mental Arithmetic
Written Arithmetic
Bookkeeping
Civil Government
Drawing Blackboard
English Composition
English Grammar
Geography
History, US
Penmanship
Physiology
Reading
Theory and Art of Teaching
Orthography

Anyone know what Orthography is? Physiology?

Passing these subjects would have earned them a ‘Teacher’s Second Grade Certificate.’ The certificate had nothing to do with teaching second grade. It merely meant she could teach primary grades. The certificate was good for six months.

If she earned a ‘Teacher’s First Grade Certicate’, she would have passed more difficult courses like Algebra, Geometry, Botany and Natural Philosophy. She would be teaching older children, and her certificate would be valid for one year.

A Third Grade Certificate was the lowest ranked and was good for only 3 months, about one school term. There was even a probational certificate for those teachers who came within 10% of passing her third grade certificate requirements. However, to renew it, she had to score higher or not be allowed to teach. That said, these requirements were left up to the county superintendent to enforce as he saw fit.

Teachers sometimes made as little as $4 to $11 per month, but others in Kansas and Nebraska earned as much as $25 month. Since school was only in session 3 - 4 months out of the year (children were needed to help with fall harvesting and spring chores like calving and planting) she was forced to either find another job during the off-months, or find a way to live a year on 4 months salary.

All that said, in the late 1800’s, the Midwest, namely Kansas and Nebraska, claimed some of the best literacy rates in the country.

Here’s an 1895 final exam, taken by eighth graders in Salina, Kansas, from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

Note that this test was five hours long. Yikes!

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case. Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that
you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs. What is it worth at 50 cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. of coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln,Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography,etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, sub vocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u’.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e’. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

Were you as amazed as I was? It was very common to read of our ancestors having only an eighth grade education, but hot-diggity, with smarts like this, they probably didn’t need to go onto secondary education. At least, not like we do today.

So, do tell. Can you answer these questions? With news reports lamenting the lower than expected reading scores in some of today’s schools, do you think we should go back to nineteenth century standards of learning?

What was the hardest class you took in school? What were you a whiz at? What classes did you have back then that you wished the schools had now? Share your school experiences with us!

And don’t forget Monday, September 15th, is the last day to enter our Sizzling Summer Contest!

It’s good to be back home after an twelve-day trip that included the RWA Conference. It was particularly great to meet – in person – the other fillies at the conference.It’s always hard to get back on track, at least for me. Particularly when, on the second day of my return, my hot water heater broke, flooding the house. I’m in the midst of major repairs, including a new ceiling for my office, new carpets and painting.

But as usual, I digress. I did not intend to whine, especially after having two glorious week driving up the California coast and feasting in San Francisco. It was just such a sudden jerk back into reality.

But back to the topic of this blog. One of the real pleasures of this blog was to drive me back to my western library. I’m finding books I collected throughout the last thirty years. Most came from western museums. Some are histories, some are diaries, some are pamphlets. I am fascinated by all of them, and I lose so many hours of time reveling in them. I’m like a kid in my own toy store.

My latest find is a sixty-page soft-cover book titled “Women of the West,” by Rick Steber. It’s a collection of one page tales of women of the west. One of them is the story of Gladys Berkley who traveled to the Virginia Valley to teach school. “When she saw the lonely place that was to be her home, she cried.”

But the pay was a fortune: $125 a month, and she was determined to stick it out for a year.

Her duties were not limited to teaching twenty ranch children. She was also responsible for janitorial duties as well as helping the first and second graders saddle and bridle their horses. “I was a city girl. I had never saddled or bridled a horse in my life. I learned.”

She also had to start a fire daily and pump a bucket of water to be used by the students. The one room school was also the mail stop. Ranchers sent mail to school with their children, and the letters were placed on the widow ledge in the hall, and during the day, anyone riding past the school going to nearby towns would stop and pick up the mail.

But her first impression of the “lonely place” changed, and she married a local rancher while teaching generations of rancher’s sons and daughters.

Those few paragraphs have the power to fire the writer’s mind. What prompted her to set out on her own? Who did she marry, and how did the courtship go? Did they have children?

And before long a story begins to grow in my head.

People often ask where I get my ideas. They usually come from some tidbit in a newspaper or pamphlet or magazine.  A seed of an idea that sometimes takes years to germinate, but lies there somewhere, tickling on occasion before making it known that its time has come.

So where do you get your ideas?    Do youlet them ferment for years before bringing them to the page? 

When I finish a book, I usually feverishly try to catch up on much neglected chores.  One of those (usually futile) exercises is an attempt once again to cull my books.I blogged once before on an effort to find books to sell at a community-wide garage sale. After two days of searching through several thousand books, I ended up with less than ten discards. Those ten have since been replaced fifty fold. So another attempt was in order.

Isabella was a spinster who traveled around the world. She made an extended tour of the Rocky Mountain area of Colorado when she was on her way back to England from the Sandwich Islands (now the Hawaiian Islands), During her lifetime she also traveled to Canada, India, Tibet, Japan, the Malay Peninsula among many others.   She established hospitals in Kashmir, Punjab, China and Korea. She was the first woman ever elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in England.

And she did all this traveling alone. Amazing to me. I’m always filled with awe when I read of her travels. But my favorite of her travels was her months long journey through the Rocky Mountains, most of the time alone. According to the forward of “A Lady’s Life,” she didn’t go to see the curiosities or the sights. She was more interested in discovering what it felt like to live in other places. “She had an amazing capacity quickly to become a resident.” And so she did in the Rocky Mountains.

My copy of the book has numerous passages underlined. I love her descriptions of the shape and color of place. You feel like you’re there with her, riding along as she meets ordinary (are there any?)and extraordinary people.

One of her adventures was ascending Long’s Peak.   Remember there were no roads then, and it was a harrowing effort.   This is her initial impression of the peak: “It is one of the noblest of mountains, but in one’s imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality. In its caverns and abysses one comes to fancy that it generates and chains the strong winds, to let them loose in its fury. The thunder becomes its voice, and the lightnings do it homage. Other summits blush under the morning kiss of the sun , and turn pale the next moment; but it detains the first sunlight and holds it round its head for an hour at least, till it pleases to change from rosy red to deep blue; and the sunset, as if spell-bound, lingers on its crest.

“The soft winds which hardly rustle the pine needles down here are raging rudely up there round its motionless summit. The mark of fire is upon it; and though it has passed into a grim repose, it tells of fire and upheaval as truly, through not as eloquently, as the living volcanos of Hawaii.”

She was guided up the mountain by “Mountain Jim,” a notorious desperado and “as awful-looking a ruffian as one could see.” But she had been told, “Treat Jim as a gentleman, and you’ll find him one.” So he did, and she described meeting the man’s dog, “Ring, said to be the best hunting dog in Colorado, with the body and legs of a collie, but a head approaching that of a mastiff, a noble face with a wistful human expression, and the most truthful eyes I ever saw in an animal.” Later, “‘Jim’ or Mr. Nugent, as I always scrupulously called him, told stories of his early youth, and of a great sorrow which had led him to embark on a lawless and desperate life. His voice trembled, and tears ran down his cheek.   Was it semi-conscious acting, I wondered, or was his dark soul really stirred to its depths by the silence, the beauty, and the memories of youth?”

She mentions courtesies extended by men she meets along the way, then adds, “These men might have been excused for speaking in a somewhat free-and easy tone to a lady riding alone, and in an unwonted fashion. Womanly dignity and manly respect for women are the salt of society in this wild West.”

And so she continues with tales of people she meets and places she’d been with such eloquence that you want to read some passages over and over.

About one homesteader, she wrote:”Mrs. H lays aside her work for a few minutes and reads some favorite passage of prose or poetry as I have seldom heard either read before, with a voice of large compass and exquisite tone, quick to interpret every shade of the author’s meaning, and soft speaking eyes, moist with feeling and sympathy.   These are our halcyon hours, when we forget the needs of the morrow, and that men still buy, sell, cheat, and strive for good, and that we are in the Rocky Mountains, and that it is near midnight.”

I love her eloquence and empathy for people and the land.   I greatly admire her grit,  curiosity and unquenchable good nature that made friends of everyone she met, even “ruffians” and desperadoes.

What a great heroine!

I’m holding a small contest.   Do you have a favorite real life heroine?   Past or present?   Tell us why.

I’ll send a copy of “A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains” to the one of those who reply.

When the heritage society here in town recently offered a tour of the Riverside Cemetery and some of our historic homes, I decided that would be interesting. I didn’t know the half of it. I learned so much about the local area and the people who founded it.

One piece of information that came to light was about a settler named Minnie Mae Adickes. She came to Wichita Falls in 1905 with her husband, Thomas Adickes. They were barely here a year when her husband suddenly died. It left Minnie Mae with five daughters, the youngest only three months old, to raise.

It would’ve been easy for Minnie Mae to accept the help of both her brother and brother-in-law who were the town’s founding fathers and quite well-to-do. But, she turned them down and decided to make her own way. She valued independence over everything. And I’m sure she didn’t want to be a burden on family. The picture here is the Frank Kell family - her brother-in-law, his wife, mother, and seven children. They’re a story of their own.

So spurning family help, in 1906 Minnie Mae entered into the real estate profession and embarked on a career of building houses. Now as a woman, she could not at that time sign a legal document herself. But she built over 300 homes and never lost a dime. Her only contract was a simple handshake that she never regretted. She built homes for the influential and also for the poor that she let pay out in installments. Her buyers always paid her on time. She taught all five of her daughters to record cash payments at their home weekly.

And so, a woman who didn’t seem to have any ability to provide for herself when her husband died ended up building over 300 homes. Her extraordinary efforts helped the city to grow and proper until her death in 1931 at the age of 57.

The image of this late Victorian house is one that she designed and built for her brother-in-law Frank Kell and his family. It’s called the Kell House and is now a museum. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and bears both the Texas State and local landmark designation. The house is 5,500 square feet and it still has a working elevator as well as many original furnishings.

Minnie Mae never married again. She raised her daughters and taught them everything about independence and of the rights of women. During WWI she was chairwoman of the Red Cross canteen division and held parties for officers and men at the local air base. In 1920, Mrs. Adickes was the first woman elected to serve as a member of the school board. I’m sorry I can’t find a photo of her. I hear she was as beautiful as she was intelligent. She’s exactly the kind of woman I want to model the heroines in my books after.

Minnie Mae Adickes was an uncommon woman and way ahead of her time.

Are there any interesting people or history in your area? Do you know of any stories of extraordinary women? Want to share?

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Though Anne Bradstreet is known as the first woman to have had a book published in the United States, it’s most likely there were others before her, but none recognized as written by women.

English -born Anne was the daughter of Thomas Dudley, steward to the earl of Lincoln, and she grew up in the cultured surroundings of Tattershall Castle.  Though theirs was a strictly religious household, her father, a Nonconformist, educated her himself, as well as having her tutored in history, several languages and literature–highly unusual for a female.  More fortunate than other girls, Anne had access to the castle library.  Anne married when she was sixteen.  Yikes!  We can hardly conceive of it, but it was common practice.  Simon Bradstreet’s father had been a Puritan minister, and Simon remained in the care of the Dudleys after his father’s death.

Two years later in 1630, the entire family made the arduous journey to New England in hopes of setting up plantation colonies.  With a husband and father of status in the new colonies, Anne held a visible position of status.  What with climate, lack of food and primitive conditions, life was far more difficult than in jolly old England.  A second bout of smallpox left Anne with paralyzed joints, though she raised eight children and ran a household.  Simon often traveled to other colonies, leaving her to read, educate her children, and write poetry.

Anne’s brother-in-law, John Woodbridge, secretly copied her work and took it to England where he had “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts” published.  It was a tribute to her childhood and what she’d left behind.  Her mature work was never published until after her death.

Cultural bias toward women was common in her time–a woman’s place was in the home.  Period.  Women were intellectual inferiors.  Critics thought Anne stole her ideas from men, and her writing was criticized because of her gender. The public had a harsh reaction to her role as a female writer. When the book was released, the idea that she was a virtuous women had to be stressed. Her brother-in-law even wrote: “By a Gentle Women in Those Parts” on the title page to assure readers that Anne didn’t neglect her duties as a Puritan woman in order to write.  He saw the need to clarify that she found time for her poetry by sacrificing sleep and using what little leisure time she had.  I’m probably not the only wife/mother/author who can identify with that! We can see the anger that Bradstreet felt toward criticism in the following lines:

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue 
Who says my hand a needle better fits; 
A poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on female wits.
If what I do prove well, it won’t advance;
They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.

There were other women writers during the early years in the colonies, those who wrote poems and essays that have been preserved as part of American culture, but Anne is known as the first American female poet.  It’s likely that other women’s work was published anonymously or with a male pseudonym.  It’s estimated that one third of all the American novels written up to 1820 were by women authors.

It’s interesting to realize that Anne wrote in a time and a culture when a woman seeking knowledge was considered against God’s will.  Her writing reveals her faith, her devotion to God, and to her husband and family, but it also shows that she was a freethinker and probably one of the first feminists.  Recurring themes in her poems were love for her husband and pleas with God to watch over her children and husband. Anne developed tuberculosis and died at the age of sixty.

In looking for paintings or drawings of Anne, these two recurred.  One is actually labeled as a painting of Anne Bradstreet, the other, which is often used with her biography is a Rembrandt, titled, “A Woman With A Pink.”  I couldn’t find information to substantiate that this was indeed a portrait of Anne Bradstreet, though both she and the famous painter were alive during this time period.  It’s certainly possible.  If anyone knows, I’d love to hear.

We may have come a long way, baby, but women’s writing still gets less respect than that of our male counterparts.  We are the relationship storytellers who keep love and romance alive, and it’s what makes the world go ‘round.  Though our genre holds the biggest piece of the publishing pie, many still turn up their nose at fiction written by women for women.  Only a few years ago, women suspense writers wrote under male pseudonyms to be published.  At least we’re reviewed on the merit of our work, and not because we’re women!

Hats off to Anne Bradstreet, a forward thinking woman who paved the way for women writers!  If Anne were here today, what would you like to ask her?

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They also had to protect themselves, and thus they had a different code of the west than their male counterparts.

According to The Cowgirls” by Joyce Gibson Roach, the cattlemen of the west adhered to an unwritten code in the use of guns. Eugene Manlove Rhodes in “Beyond The Desert” put it in words: “It was not the custom to war without fresh offense, openly given. You must not smile and shoot. You must not shoot and unarmed man , and you must not shoot an unarmed man . . . ”

But pistol-toting cattlewomen also observed a code, and it bore small resemblance to that of the men but recognized their advantage men sometimes had. Briefly put, the women’s rules advised:

1. Strange men will do to shoot.

2. Shoot first, ask questions later.

3. If you shoot a man in the back, he rarely returns fire.

4. Scare a man to death even if you do not intend to kill him.

5. If a man needs killing, do it.”

I really like these rules.    Not that I’m blood thirsty, but there was a different reality when women were alone in what was often a wild west.

One of my favorite heroines was in the Scotsman Wore Spurs. The heroine disguised herself as a lad so she could go on a cattle drive. I worried then that it might be unbelievable, but in “The Cowgirls”, a dangerous woman made use of a disguise and passed as a cowboy traveling over the cattle trails to find a false lover. When the woman found her man, she called him aside and revealed her entity to him. She never said what she did to him but she remarked, “I’ll bet he won’t trifle with another girl’s affections.” You can make your own guess.

Another intrepid woman, Cassie Redwine of the Texas Panhandle, practiced the code on outlaws.   While she did not shoot men in the back, she did ambush a few. When robbers were terrorizing the upper Red and Canadian rivers, and when five hundred head of Cassie’s stock disappeared, she decided to put an stop to it. For three days her cowboys pursued the thieves until they discovered three men in a secret camp. Cassie ordered some of her men to surround the desperadoes, capture them and change into their clothes. Cassie’s men then took positions on either side of the camp and when the rest of the robbers rode unsuspectingly into camp, Cassie picked off Black Pedro, the leader, and the rest fell soon after or were captured. Next morning, the prisoners were shot or hanged.

One problem with the code was that a man never knew whether a woman might shot first and ask questions later or whether she was bluffing. It didn’t pay to believe the latter. An unknown south Texas woman who ram-rodded her own ranch and broke her own horses was reported to have blown the top off a cowboy’s head with a forty-five slug when he got fresh and pinched her ankle in fun. No one made the mistake of teasing her again.

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I’ve often thought that we as authors can never make up anything or anyone as unique and wonderful as those who have actually lived. There is always someone who has done what our most creative characters have done.

There were many women who spent the entire Civil War disguised as a man. There were warrior queens, and a Scots lass who saved a king. There were women outlaws and ranchers and newspaper editors who are part of the fabric that made the west so fascinating to us. Whenever anyone tells me a real-life heroine wouldn’t do something, I can always point to someone who has.

It’s why I love history so much. You simply can’t make up some of this stuff.

So do you have a real-life heroine – now or in the past – that would make a great fictional one?