Lucy Fellows was born in 1857 in Placer County California to gold seeking parents. At five years old, she traveled on a pack mule to Illinois, then back to Virginia City, Montana and Bannock, Idaho, both gold producing areas. Her parents then moved the family to Soda Springs, Idaho. Once there, Lucy’s father started a freight hauling business.
Luther Morrison was a family friend who accompanied the Fellows family to Soda Springs. He had traveled the Oregon trail at the age of 20 and served as an Idaho Territory legislator and ran a sheep operation. Despite the age difference–Luther was 44 and Lucy was 16 when they married–they had a great partnership. Over the next nine years, they had three daughters and grew their herd to 3,000 sheep.
The Morrisons moved to Wyoming Territory in 1881 with an infant, two very young daughters and 2,000 sheep. They wintered in the South Pass area, and while the family survived the brutal Wyoming winter, they lost all but 200 sheep. After that year they established a winter range and summer range and began rebuilding their bands. They family, which eventually welcomed a boy, lived in a tent banked with dirt for four years. Lucy didn’t see another white woman for over five years, but she was a woman who enjoyed a nomadic life, and happily lived in a sheep wagon during the summer months and eventually in the cabin that Luther built during the winters.
Luther made the three-week roundtrip to Rawlings, 150 miles away, twice a year for supplies, leaving Lucy at home to deal with the small children and sheep. She was afraid of the Native Americans and when they would pass through the area, she would dot her and the children’s faces with flour and say they had smallpox. The Native Americans caught on after a number of bouts of “smallpox”, and told Lucy, in English, that she was a smart woman. After that, they left her alone.
Lucy was a Methodist and did not allow swearing or drinking in her home or in the sheep camps. Her children were taught to read and write and the older children went to private schools.
Luther died in 1898, leaving Lucy to run the sheep alone. At the time, she had 16 large bands of sheep, but halved the number in 1900. In 1902 she married one of her shepherds, Curtis Moore, a man who didn’t drink or curse. She gifted him a band of 1000 sheep, saying that it meant she married “a sheepman instead of a penniless shepherd.”
Lucy was involved in the range wars between the sheep and cattlemen. Sheep ranching boomed after 1897 and became Wyoming’s primary industry by 1910. There was no system for leasing of land, and cattlemen believed that sheep were ruining grazing by eating the grass too low to the ground. In 1897, Lucy’s horses were shot. In 1904, her son, Lincoln was shot. He lived, and Lucy offered a $3500 reward for the capture of the shooter. Eventually she hired a private detective to find the man, who was apprehended in Montana ten years after the shooting. The range wars continued and in 1909, three sheepmen were killed south of Ten Sleep, Wyoming. Lucy feared for her life, but she continued running sheep. By this time she was called The Sheep Queen of Wyoming by the locals, a title she first thought was derisive, but eventually came to love.
Lucy might have been a nomad at times, but she also enjoyed the finer things in life. She took her children to Europe, bought one of the first vehicles in Wyoming, and eventually allowed the oil industry to lease land for derricks. She invested in land near Los Angeles and began to spend the winters in a sunnier climate while her son looked after the sheep.
An author, Caroline Lockhart, spend the summer of 1919 with Lucy in the sheep camps. She wrote a bestseller called The Fighting Shepherdess, loosely based on Lucy’s life, which was made into a movie by MGM in 1920.
Lucy suffered a stroke in 1930 and died in 1932 in Casper, Wyoming. Her husband sold the sheep operation and moved to California.
Jeannie Watt raises cattle in Montana and loves all things western. When she's not writing, Jeannie enjoys sewing, making mosaic mirrors, riding her horses and buying hay. Lots and lots of hay.
What a fascinating woman!
She really is.
Very ambitious woman. What a fascinating post. Thank you.
You’re very welcome. I enjoyed researching her.
Wow! She was amazing!
I agree, Rhonda.
I loved reading this blog! We go to Wyoming every July. Ranchers are bringing flocks of sheep up the mountains to graze. It is a wonder to watch the Great Pyrenees dogs herd the sheep along with the Basques sheep herders. The covered wagons are set up on top of a bluff to watch over the sheep. The horses are hobbled when not being ridden. It is amazing to observe. Your post absolutely warmed my heart today. Thank you!
What a great picture you paint, Kathy! Love it!
What an amazing woman. But the last line was confusing, making me think she died twice.
Oops! I will edit. I thought she died of the stroke, then discovered that she didn’t. Thank you!
I love learning about real-life women taming the frontier. Thanks for sharng about Miss Lucy, Jeannie. A stong, clever woman who knew how to make the best of hard circumstances. I’m glad she got to enjoy some luxury later in life.
She did seem to appreciate both a simplified life as well as the niceties she could afford later. She was fun to research.
What a fascinating article. She was amazing! Thank you for sharing.
You’re very welcome, Barbara!
Oh, wow!! Lucy was ahead of her time!!! What an inspiration!!
She really was ahead of her time!
Good morning, I enjoyed reading this blog, thank you. Lucy was a very smart and tough lady, good for her and she made something of herself . Have a great day. Thank you so much for sharing about this awesome and very inspirational lady .
You’re very welcome, Alicia!
I appreciate hearing about strong women from any time period and she led a fascinating life. Thanks for telling us about her.
It was a fun research project. Glad to share, 🙂
Wow, what a story. She had a lot of grit…
Grit is a perfect description!
I loved hearing about Lucy. I will have to read some more about her. I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming but I can only imagine how brutal the winters were for women like Lucy. She was one amazing, strong, and independent lady! Thank for sharing her story.
You’re right, Sharon—she was very strong. You for sure know what Wyoming winters can bring!
Thank you so much for sharing this story. Lucy was a very strong woman.
You’re very welcome! 🙂
Thank you for an interesting post. She certainly lived an interesting life and was quite capable of handling herself and her sheep operation. Her children may have grown up in rather primitive conditions, but they were well traveled and their education was much better than most children of their time. I do have a few questions about the “end of the story.” Her son rand the operation while she was gone, but her husband sold the operation after her death. I wonder if she had a will that included her children or if it all went to the husband with the son getting nothing from the sale of something he worked & managed his whole life.
What an interesting article. She was ahead of her time.
Lucy would put all those women who pushed for “womens’ lib” in the ’60’s to shame! Thanks for the mini biography, Jeannie.
I just discovered that Caroline Lockhart’s book about her is free on Kindle! I downloaded a copy, sounds very interesting.