She was not unique for the time.

There are  many “real life” heroines of the west from which I modeled Sam. Some came from a book, “The Cowgirls,” by Joyce Gibson Roach. I’ve blogged about women from the book before because it includes some very remarkable ones.

These strong, independent women are why I love writing westerns so much. They had opportunities unavailable anywhere else. Widowed or deserted by husbands, they became ranchers, wranglers, doctors, proprietors, miners and entrepreneurs.   They opened rooming houses, taught school, drove mules and even robbed banks.

Eugene Manlove Rhodes in “Beyond the Desert” put into words an unwritten code for cattlemen. “It is not the custom to war without fresh offense, openly given. You must not smile and shoot. You must not shoot an unarmed man, and you must not shoot an unarmed man. . . ”

According to Ms. Roach, there was a different code observed by pistol-toting cattlewomen. These rules advised:

1. Strange men will do well 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.

My Samantha had at least two and possibly four of those reasons to shoot Marshal Jared Evans, a man she thought a ruthless pursuer of the man who raised her.

She would fit perfectly among Ms. Roach’s real life heroines.

There was, for instance, Mrs. Stevens who lived in Lonesome Valley, Arizona.. When her husband went to town thirty miles away, she stayed home to guard the homestead and their children. She glanced out the window and  saw a rag on a bush outside. Since she didn’t remember hanging anything on that bush, she decided it was an Indian. She grabbed her gun, drew a bead on the rag, and “plugged an Apache right between the eyes.” After the Indian fell, she discovered the ranch was surrounded by Indians. Emboldened by her success, she held off the Indians until some cowboys chanced by and ran off the Apaches. When finished, they asked Mrs. Stevens if she wanted to send a message to her husband. On a piece of paper, she wrote,

“Dear Lewis,

The Apaches came. I’m mighty nigh out of buck-shot. Please send more.

Your loving wife.”

No please come home. Just send buck-shot.

Then there was Willie. The story was familiar because I once wrote a book, “The Scotsman Wore Spurs” with a heroine just like Willie.

Women occasionally accompanied their husbands on cattle drives, but the usual mode of travel was a buggy.    Willie made it on horseback.

Willie was hired by a trail boss  looking for drovers in Clayton, New Mexico. The boy looked about nineteen, according to the trail boss, and made a good hand with the horses and cattle. According to Ms. Roach’s book, the boss declared that Willie got up on the darkest stormiest nights and stayed with the cattle. “Equally as impressive was the fact that Willie did not drink, chew or cuss.”

After four months, when the bunch reached the Colorado-Wyoming line, Willie said he was homesick, asked to draw his pay, and rode off. Later in the day, a well dressed young lady rode in and addressed the trail boss and asked if he recognized her. The startled trail boss finally recognized her as Willie and asked why she had done such a thing.

She replied her father had been a drover and she wanted to know what it was like. Upon hearing a trail boss was looking for hands, she’d taken her brother’s clothes and asked for a job.

But others earned respect without subterfuge. There was Maude Reed, a Swedish girl who gathered a herd of cattle in Colorado. According to a brief news item in the local paper, she started with a few head of cattle, and by strict attention, economy and bearing all the hardships of a frontier life, she became one of the shrewdest and ablest cattle owners in Mesa County.

In Texas, there were fifty cowgirls operating a ranch in the hill country between San Marcos and San Antonio in the mid-1880’s. Some supposedly came from the finest families in the state and some from the worst. They did, of course, all the riding and roping and branding. Their leader was a whip-cracking brunette from the Oklahoma territory whose boyfriend was an outlaw by the name of Payne.

Another Texas woman, Sally Skull, was very skilled in deciding who needed killing. A man once made an unkind remark about her and when she found out about it, she called him out and shot bullets at his boots until he danced.

Having learned about horses from her late husband, Sally was a horse trader. Totally fearless, she traveled south of the border to buy horses and sold them in Texas. She spoke fluent Spanish, hired Mexicans to work for her, and thought well of the Mexican people in general. She used a salty vocabulary which inspired respect from males, but her real talent was in handling firearms. She carried a rifle and was deadly with it. Two pistols hung from a cartridge belt around her waist and she could use them with either hand with equal skill. She also carried a whip with which she popped flowers off their stems for entertainment, She also liked to gamble, and she played poker at Haynes’ saloon which was also frequented by outlaw John Wesley Hardin.

I’ve always believed a writer can’t possible make up anything as fascinating as real life, and this is particularly true of the bigger than life characters of the west.

     
One hundred and eight years ago today, Fannie Merritt Farmer opened the door to Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston. 

I’m sure most of you have at least heard the name Fannie Farmer and are aware that there is a famous cookbook that bears her name.  But how much do you know about the woman herself?  Fannie Farmer was a woman of keen intelligence, unusual motivation, avid curiosity and personal courage.

Fannie, born in 1857 in Medford, MA, to Mary Watson Merritt and John Franklin Farmer, was the oldest of four daughters.  Her father was an editor and printer and both parents placed a high value on education – it was expected that Fannie would go to college.  However, when Fannie was 16 she suffered a paralytic stroke and could not continue her education.  For a number of years after her stroke she was unable to walk and remained in her parents’ care.  It was during this time that Fannie developed an interest in cooking. 

At the age of 30, Fannie, who now walked (though she would have a pronounced limp for the remainder of her years), enrolled in the Boston Cooking School. This was at the height of the domestic science movement and the school utilized a scientific approach to cooking and food preparation.  It also trained women to become cooking teachers at a time when their opportunities for employment were limited.  Fannie attended the school for two years, learning what was considered the most crucial elements of the science – nutrition and diet for the healthy person, cooking for convalescents, methods of cleaning and sanitation, techniques of baking and cooking, and general household management.  During her time as a student, Fannie studied under Mary J. Lincoln, who published the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.  This cookbook was used in a number of cooking schools, most of which were established for the training of professional cooks and cooking instructors.

Fannie proved herself to be one of the school’s more outstanding students and was kept on as assistant to the director after she graduated.  During this time, Fannie started exploring the association between eating and health.  She went so far as to take a summer course at Harvard Medical School to aid in her understanding of this connection.  Eventually she was appointed school principal and then, in 1894, director.  It was just two years later, in 1896, that Fannie revised and reissued The Boston Cooking School Cookbook.  The publication of Fannie’s book was a highly significant event in cooking history.  Before this publication, ingredient measurements were imprecise, using  subjective notations such as ‘the size of an egg’ or ‘a teacup full’.  Such vague measurements made it very difficult to duplicate results from cook to cook.  Fannie’s cookbook introduced the idea of using standardized measuring utensils with an emphasis on taking care to use level measurements..  In addition to the more than 1800 recipes, the book included scientific explanations of the chemical processes that occur during cooking as well as essays on housekeeping, the importance of cleanliness in the kitchen, canning and drying produce and nutritional information.

Little, Brown & Company, who produced the book, had doubts that the book would do well and so only produced 3000 copies, which were published at the author’s expense.  However, the book proved so popular that Fannie saw twenty-one editions printed during her lifetime.  It has remained a standard work and it is still available in print today, over 100 years later.

Fannie continued to serve as director of the Boston Cooking School for eleven years, then resigned and went on to establish her own school.  Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery, as it was known,  emphasized the practice of cookery rather than just theory.  Its target students were housewives rather than future academics.  Fannie also focused on developing cooking equipment for the sick and disabled.  She became a highly respected authority in this field and was invited to deliver lectures to nurses, women’s clubs and even the Harvard Medical School.  Her lectures were printed by newspapers across the country making her influence widespread and her name a household word.  She also wrote a popular cooking column for a national magazine, the Woman’s Home Companion, which ran for ten years.

In addition to the 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (Later known simply as the Fannie Farmer Cookbook), Fannie published five other cookbooks.  They are:

• Chafing Dish Possibilities,  1898.
• Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, 1904.
• What to Have for Dinner,  1905.
• Catering for Special Occasions, with Menus and Recipes, 1911.
• A New Book of Cookery, 1912.

Later in life, Fannie suffered a second paralytic stroke that confined her to a wheelchair for the last seven years of her life.  However, that did not prevent her from carrying on her responsibilities.  She continued to lecture, write, invent recipes and travel.   In fact, just ten days before her death, she delivered a lecture from her wheelchair.  Fannie died in 1915 at the age of 57.

For those of you interested in taking a look at the original 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cookbook here is a link to the online version  http://www.bartleby.com/87/

When the suspension bridge opened in 1870, and the railroad arrived in 1871, business in Waco thrived. Trail drives repeatedly lost cattle when herding their livestock across the Brazos. It wasn’t uncommon for a man to be caught in the undertow and drown. Cattle bosses were willing to pay the 50 cents per animal to get their cattle across safely.

In her book, A Spirit So Rare, Patricia Ward Wallace broaches the topic of how women forged a path in the early history of Waco. Her chapter on prostitutes is titled Women of Controversy. Since prostitution plays a minor role in my western time travel romance, I’d like to borrow her title and share some of what I learned.

The first noted record of prostitution in Waco is documented in an 1876 city directory. Matilda Davis of 76 N. Fourth St. is listed as a madam with 10 occupants in her house. The women listed their occupation as actress. Waco had no playhouse at the time. In 1879, the city issued the first license for a bawdy house for an annual fee of $200 and a good behavior bond of $500.

Waco officials legalized prostitution within the Reservation in 1889 making Waco the first town in Texas and the second in the United States to condone a controlled red-light district. Madams paid a yearly fee of $12.50 for each bedroom and $10.00 for each bawd. Prostitutes paid an additional $10.00 license fee and paid the city physician $2.00 twice a month for a medical exam. This guaranteed they didn’t ply their trade outside their designated territory and were disease free. The city prohibited drinking within the area. Fines for violators ranged between $50 and $100. With the large number of prostitutes it’s easy to see the city benefited from trade within the Reservation.

Prostitutes were prohibited from being seen on the streets outside the Reservation yet they were allowed to trade with local businesses. No more than two at a time could travel via a city hack to the stores. Usually tradesmen sent clerks to the curb with merchandise. Some store owners required the prostitutes to stop at the back door.

Life was hard for these working girls. Violence abounded in the bordellos as did drug and alcohol use and abuse. Though licensed, the police had little to do with the establishments. The madams disciplined the women in their houses and maintained order among their clientele. On occasion the police were called when robberies or assaults occurred.

Waco’s most famous madam was Mollie Adams. She had worked in another house but in 1890 opened her own three-room operation. By 1893 she had a seven-room establishment. In 1910 she’d obtained enough wealth to commission a house to be built by the same firm that built the First Baptist Church of Waco and the building now the Dr. Pepper Museum. Her home at 408 N. Second St., had indoor plumbing, electric fixtures, two parlors, a dance hall, and a bell system wired to every room. Her portrait, included here, hung over the fireplace. Though wealthy at this point in her life, she died in an indigent home in 1944. Lorna Lane, the madam in Madison Cooper’s epic novel, Sironia, is supposedly modeled after Mollie Adams.

In 1917, the US Government ordered cities with military bases to shut down red light districts to protect the health of America’s soldiers. Not wanting to lose Camp MacArthur and its 36,000 troops, the city shut down the Reservation in August of 1917. It is rumored some bawdy houses managed to continue business through the 1920s.

References: Wallace, P. W., A Spirit So Rare, pp. 148-156. http://wacohistoryproject.org/Places/reservation.htm

Photo: Courtesy of Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas

Thank you the Petticoat and Pistols ladies for having me as your guest today. Readers, I love comments. Leave me one and “Felicia Filly” will draw a winner for an e-copy of My Heart Will Find Yours. Visit my website at www.lindalaroque.com to read the first chapters of my books. I give away an ebook every month on my blog at http://www.lindalaroqueauthor.blogspot/

Happy Reading and Writing!

Linda 

Nan Aspinwall, born in Nebraska in 1880, was skilled at trick roping, sharp shooting, archery, stunt riding, bronc riding, and steer riding. She also portrayed an Oriental dancer called Princess Omene.

She was eventually the highest paid star in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East troupe. None of these things are what she became really famous for. Two-Gun Nan’s true claim to fame came in 1910-11 when, on a bet from Buffalo Bill, she rode from San Francisco to New York on horseback. At the age of 31, she covered 4496 miles in 180 days in the saddle, alone. The 180 days includes a week spent in the hospital when she and her horse ‘fell off a mountain.’

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I have no idea exactly what that means and I couldn’t find details but she and her horse were in good shape when they finished their historical coast to coast ride. Like a true showman, she didn’t end her ride quietly. When Nan arrived in New York she rode into a 12 -story building, on into the freight elevator and rode it to the top floor.

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Two-Gun Nan became an instant legend. At a time when the frontier to the west had closed, and barbed wire cut across every stretch of once open country along the entire continent, this cowgirl single-handedly found a way to rekindle the American fascination of saddling up, heading to the horizon, and banging around the vast expanse of a country that spread from one sea to another. Perhaps more importantly, she proved this dream and this country were open to women as well as men.

The ride became part of the greater Western mythology almost instantly, where it remained solidly for half a century. In 1938, almost three decades after the ride, Nan’s journey was included on the Mutual Broadcasting System’s national radio broadcasts of Famous First Facts. The media legend of the ride again was recounted on the radio in 1942 on a broadcast of Death Valley Days. About 1960 “Death Valley Days” did a television show about her cross-country ride, for which she was a technical advisor. In 1958, Nan’s adventure made the jump to black-and-white television when it appeared in an episode of the Judge Roy Bean television show.

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Born Nan Jeanne Aspinwall, she added the last name Gable when she married her first husband, Frank Gable, around 1900. These two traveled and performed together, and after 1913 even ran their own touring wild west vaudeville production, Gable’s Novelty Show.

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Frank died around 1929, and Nan dropped from view not long after that. Nan remarried at some point in the 1930s to a man whose last name was Lambell.

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With the new name of Nan Jeanne Aspinwall Gable Lambell, the adventurous cowgirl spent the last 34 years of her life living in anonymity and solitude by choice. She died on October 24, 1964 at age 84 in San Bernardino, CA.

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Her death certificate listed her as a life-long housewife.

Mary Connealy

On my recent foray to San Antonio, Texas, I had on my list of things to do– all walkable from my hotel– a visit to the Buckhorn Saloon and Texas Ranger Museum not far from The Alamo. It was here that I “met” a very intriguing couple, Ad and Plinky Toepperwein.

A native Texan, Adolph Toepperwein (1869-1962) took his childhood love of rifles all the way and  became a renowned trick shooter.  He toured on the vaudeville circuit, and in 1901 began a 50-year relationship with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company as an exhibition shooter.  It was during a visit to one of their manufacturing plants that he met a 19-year old employee, Elizabeth Servaty, and fell instantly in love with her. He was 34. While Ad’s sharpshooting career is totally amazing of itself, I’m going to introduce you today to his bride, a pretty amazing shot all on her own.

As soon as Elizabeth, a Connecticut native, married Ad Toepperwein in 1903, he taught his bride to shoot. She had never fired a gun in her life. During her training, she shot at tin cans with a .22, and after several tries, made her first hit, telling Ad, “I plinked it.”  Referring of course to the distinctive sound of bullet hitting tin.  Ever thereafter, she was known as Plinky. Practice-shooting at  easy targets like cans is today known across the world as “plinking.”

To quote Ad himself, Plinky was  “a  natural.” Within three weeks of her first lesson, she joined his act,  shooting one-inch pieces of chalk from between his fingers and empty shells off his fingertips.

She and Ad began touring as a husband and wife trick-shooting team in a career that spanned 40 years.  At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, they set one incredible record after another. They shot while standing on their heads and while lying on their backs. They broke two targets at the same time, one in front and one behind using a mirror. Some of Plinky’s aerial targets included marbles, metal discs, apples, oranges and eggs.

Not only did Plinky please the crowds, but she also set records in the process. She was the first woman to break 100 straight targets at trapshooting, and she repeated this amazing feat  more than 200 times, often with a twelve-gauge Winchester model 97 pump gun.

 She also earned the world endurance trapshooting record by hitting 1,952 clay birds out of  2,000 thrown in five hours and twenty minutes. And this time span included the time needed to cool the gun barrel and unpack targets!

She missed only eight, hitting an unheard of 97.6%.  

Celebrity shooter Annie Oakley, a member of the Trapshooting Hall of Fame, once told Plinky, “Mrs. Top . . . you’re the greatest shot I’ve ever seen.” In 1969, Plinky  was inducted into the Trapshooting Hall of Fame in Vandalia, Ohio.

Although trapshooting was her main focus, Plinky was equally skilled with rifle, pistol and shot gun. Elizabeth Servaty Toepperwein became the first woman in United States History to qualify as a national marksman with the military rifle. Amidst all this, she gave birth to and raised son Lawrence, who sadly predeceased her in 1940 at only 36 years of age.

Despite her amazing talent, Plinky was proud to never have shot an animal. And while it’s informally believed she was a better all-around shot than her trick shooter husband, they never held a contest to find out for sure.  Plinky died in her San Antonio  home with her husband at her bedside, on January 27, 1945, and was buried in Mission Burial Park, San Antonio.              

After Ad’s death on March 4, 1962, he was laid to rest beside his wife. Shortly thereafter, a Toepperwein museum housing the memorabilia of the couple’s many years of marksmanship was displayed on the grounds of The Lone Star Brewery in San Antonio.  In late 1998 the Toepperwein Gallery was moved  to the Buckhorn Saloon and Texas Ranger Museum a few blocks downtown from The Alamo, where I came to know Plinky and Ad. 

How about you? Anybody ever gone trapshooting? (I tried at the Bandera Gun Club and was a total failure.) Anybody have a childhood hobby you’ve carried into adulthood, or even become a pro at it?

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