Much has been written about women who traversed the continent by wagon train as well as those who were mail-order brides. But there’s a less well-known, more unique, and equally important percentage of young women who blazed a trail of civilization from east to west coast. These were the Harvey Girls. 

As the railroad charged across the west, little thought was given to the comfort of passengers. Food was inedible or lethal and service sloppy. Some café owners even went in cahoots with railroad crews and scammed passengers: No sooner was the food placed before the patrons who had paid half a dollar in advance, than the whistle would toot. Afraid of being left behind, passengers ran for the train and the food was “recycled” for the next trainload of unsuspecting victims. 

Fred Harvey, an Englishman, worked his way up in fine eating establishments in the East before trying his hand at a partnership that failed. After brief service on a riverboat and a stint as a postal worker, he sold advertising for a newspaper and invested in cattle ranching, finally deciding while working as a freight agent that there was a crucial need for improved food and service along the rails. Harvey negotiated with Santa Fe Railroad and built his first dining operation in a wooden depot in Topeka. The premises were spotlessly clean. Premium prices were paid for top-quality supplies and ingredients, and table settings included Irish linens and English silver.

Harvey’s standards brought instant and overwhelming success. At his second establishment, a restaurant-hotel at Florence Kansas, he hired a chef away from Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel and paid him a $5,000 salary, more than the local bankers earned. The little town of Florence became famous for its Harvey House meals. Uniforms, fingernails, place settings, food lockers, and all facilities came under stringent regulations.

Harvey, perfecting the Sudden Unannounced Visit as a means of quality control, would suddenly appear and conduct a white-glove inspection, tossing an offending manager out onto the platform at the least infraction. 

New Harvey Houses opened up at the division/meal-stop points, and by 1883, Harvey was operating seventeen establishments along the old Santa Fe Trail. The restaurants made a profit despite their devotion to quality food, generous portions, and elegant furnishings.

The only drawbacks to their success were the staffs of unreliable male employees who either showed up for work hung over or were injured in brawls. In 1883 Harvey implemented a policy that would be his greatest impact on the American West.

Advertisements appeared in several eastern and Midwestern papers: 

WANTED: Young women, 18 to 30 years of age, of good character, attractive and intelligent. 

Harvey hired waitresses the same way he’d set about locating the finest food, furniture, chefs and managers. Women were screened with the same perfectionist methods. Upon signing a contract (twelve months in the early days), she usually had twenty-four hours to tell her family good-bye and begin rigorous training in Newton, Kansas. 

Between 1883 and the 1950’s, tens of thousands of women applied and learned “the Harvey way”. The first women answering the ads had many motivations for doing so, financial reasons most prevalent: Starting out, they were paid $17.50 per month, plus tips, room and board, and unsurpassed meals. 

Though black and white uniforms, black shoes and stockings, hairnets, and no make-up were intended to diminish their appearance, the Harvey girls were the best “dishes” the dining halls served up for the frontier men. The girls were friendly faces in an often lonely land. 

Most dormitories had a courting parlor where gentlemen could call, plus a sewing room. The girls were among the best paid and best dressed females in their towns. Many, being farmers’ daughters, sent earnings home to their families. 

The women worked their way up from the lunch counter to the dining hall and earned promotions or transfers to other houses along the Santa Fe. They worked six- and seven-day weeks, often twelve hours a day in split shifts around meal trains. When not serving, they cleaned and polished and kept their station ready for the next train. 

When they did have free time, they rode the rails free, visiting family, or played softball. Some Harvey Houses had their own teams that traveled up and down the line competing in other towns. 

A Harvey House was a social and business gathering place. Many real and imagined romances were spawned in the elegant setting. Countless contracts were broken and pay forfeited when Harvey Girls met and married railroad men, cattle ranchers, and businessmen.

The impact of these “good, attractive, and intelligent” women on the towns they poured into shouldn’t be underestimated. As approximately 5,000 of them married and raised families, eastern culture and civic improvement spread throughout Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and eventually the rest of the states.

These were the women in the forefront of the law and order movements, improving safety and quality of life. Their voices were the ones heard in civic activities, church choirs, and community stage productions. The Harvey Girls who married and settled in the West tended to marry men of high standing and to be the most capable women in the community. It’s been claimed that thousands of boys born to these couples bore the names Fred or Harvey or both. More so than dining experiences and service standards, Harvey’s most profound contribution to the civilization of the American West was the advent of the Harvey Girl. They worked hard, but with dignity and a sense of purpose. They were professionals worthy of respect and admiration. 

Many Harvey Houses survived the great depression o the 30’s, and as part of the war effort, Harvey Girls served thousands of troops during WW II. The disappearance of Harvey Girls is historically linked to the extremes of war and to progress in the form of automobiles and airplanes, an appropriate and worthy end to the legendary women who settled the West. 

Will Rogers, western philosopher and humorist, recognized the contribution of the Harvey Girls with this: “In the early days the traveler fed on the buffalo. For doing so, the buffalo got his picture on the nickel. Well, Fred Harvey should have his picture on one side of the dime, and one of his waitresses with her arms full of delicious ham and eggs on the other side, ‘cause they have kept the West supplied with food and wives.”

I’ve written three books with Harvey Girls as characters, and I still find them as fun and interesting as always.  Many people remember the movie with Judy Garland, which was actually set toward the very end of the era, and much liberty was taken with that storyline. 

Harvey Girls are perfect material for heroines because they’re adventurous and out of their element in a new land.  Can you imagine, as a young woman, leaving your family behind, traveling to a rugged part of the country, and working in such a disciplined atmosphere?  Your needs would be provided for, you’d be supervised, and you’d probably send your wages home to help out the family.  Of course, you just might meet a studly cowboy–with a heart-stopping mustache, of course–and live happily ever after! 

A while back, when I blogged about soiled doves, Tanya Hanson asked about birth control and what women did to prevent disease.   It was an excellent question, one I had long been curious about myself.  Tanya provided me with the incentive to finally lay those curiosities to rest.

But, I gotta tell ya, it took some doing. Information was scarce.   I rolled up my shirt sleeves and sought help from a soiled dove expert who recommended some resources. None of the libraries in my area had those books, but I found them online and promptly bought them. I also stumbled upon a book detailing the history of contraceptives in America, which proved my biggest treasure of all.

So here you go, my friends. Birth control in the Old West.

First off, let me explain why information was–and still is–difficult to obtain for that period.  A religious zealot, Anthony Comstock, was so incensed by the lewdness he observed in New York streets during the 1860’s that he surreptitiously wrote a law that would forbid it, along with the plentiful printed matter that openly promoted/advertised promiscuous living.  An over-worked Congress quickly passed the bill, their intent being to keep the integrity of the mails safe, yet it’s doubtful anyone realized at the time the immensity of what they’d done.

In its attempt to stop the spread of pornography, the Comstock Act of 1873 targeted information on contraception as being obscene, making it illegal to advertise or ship said information and devices. Postal inspectors hired secret agents to enforce the law, an overwhelming job at best.  And while that could be a story in itself, (as well as how creative entrepreneurs evaded the law), needless to say, with the end of the Victorian era, sex thrived.

(Disclaimer:  Before we go on, I in no way endorse any of these methods, however promising they might seem.  Please do not try these at home.)

Now, where were we?

Contraceptives have been around *forever*.  As in 1850 B.C. forever.  The oldest known guide was found in an Egyptian papyrus which described vaginal suppositories made of crocodile dung, gum, or a mixture of honey and sodium carbonate.  In actuality, there was some validity to the honey mixture, as it did seem to impede sperm motility.But crocodile dung? Yeesh.

In 4th century B.C., Aristotle writes how women coated their cervixes with olive oil. (Now, this one worked. Relatively recent studies done on 2,000 women resulted in a 0% pregnancy rate with olive oil being the only contraception.)

A few others from early times: West African women used crushed root for intra-vaginal plugs. Japanese women, bamboo tissue. Easter Island woman made algae and seaweed pessaries. Islamic guides from the 13th century recommended elephant dung which has more acidity and would’ve offered more protection than the crocodile’s stuff.

Time went on.  In pre-industrial America, women depended on methods many of us recognize today:

*Prolonged Breastfeeding

*Coitus Interruptus

*Rhythm method–counting days on the calendar.  Women were instructed by their physicians to count 14 days after the cessation of their menstrual period.  (Too bad the docs hadn’t figured out that was her most fertile time.)

*Squatting over a pot of steaming water immediately after sex to help fumigate internal organs.

As women moved further into the isolation of the west, they fashioned homemade remedies such as:

*Vinegar and water douches

*Diaphragms made from hollowed-out lemons, orange peels or beeswax

*Vaseline (I found this in several resources.  Mixed with salicylic acid (similar to aspirin), it destroyed sperm without injury to the vagina or cervix.)

*Cocoa butter and boric acid.  Another strange one.  Recipe in hand, women got together to make these like we’d get together and bake cookies.  They took a shoe box and poked holes in the lid, then put the cocoa butter in and added the boric acid which made little cones.

*Sanitary sponges–dipped in antiseptic, they were used to keep the ladies ‘germ-free’.  (Germ meaning sperm.)

*Abortifacients.

While doing this research, I was struck by the lengths women went through to control the size of their families.  Hindered by the Comstock laws, they were forced to depend on each other to learn and protect themselves with what little they had.

Next time, the male side of contraception.

  On a lighter note, please share your stories of your funniest or worst visit to your gynecologist.  Or how you learned about the birds and the bees.  Or anything about your first pregnancy or delivery.

You could win the drawing for a copy of WESTERN WINTER WONDERLAND, my Christmas anthology, signed by Jenna Kernan, Cheryl St.John and myself!

I’ll go first. My daughter–when she found out I was working on this blog–told me how her doctor (a female) was doing a pap smear on her right before Thanksgiving.  In the middle of the exam, the doc said, “Mmm, mmmm, mmm. I could sure go for some pecan pie right now!! I love pecan pie around Thanksgiving!!” Thinking it was the oddest, most bizarre thing ever to say to someone in stirrups during their annual exam, my daughter still giggles about it.

Marriages on the frontier were often made before a girl was half through her adolescent year. According to one young woman mentioned in the “Women’s Diaries of Westward Journey,” “she was married at fifteen . . .those days the young men wondering why a girl was not married if she was still single when she was sixteen. That summer Judge Deady . . . came by . . . we all rode horseback . . . We met occasionally at weddings and other social doings,” and soon they were married.

There’s instance after instance of girls of fifteen or less marrying along the trail and soon finding themselves with child despite the painful lack of privacy for people “to whom the taboos of sex and other bodily functions were completely controlling.” Some women, for instance, could not even mention in their private diaries that they were pregnant. They merely noted the arrival of a baby.

Despite the lack of privacy, there was also a new freedom. Although most girls and women continued to ride sidesaddle and wear dresses, there were opportunities for romance not present in their previous lives.   An escape to a wooded river,  trips to replenish firewood,  close proximity over thousands of miles and through any number of hardships, evenings  sitting by fires while young men played a guitar, mouth organ or fiddles all promoted romance.

Once a wedding took place, the other members of a wagon train often held a Chivarie for the couple. One such description, again from the “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey”: ” Such a Chivarie as they got that night was enough to awaken the Seven Sleepers. The newly married couple occupied a wagon for sleeping apartments. The first notice that they had of any disturbance was when the most of the men and women in the company took hold of the wagon, the men at the tongue pulling, the women at the back pushing and ran the wagon a half mile out of the prairie. Then the fun began. Such banging of cans, shooting of guns, etc. and every noise conceivable was resorted to. The disturbance was kept up until midnight when the crowd dispersed, leaving the happy couple out on the prairie to rest undisturbed until morning when they came walking into camp amid cheers and congratulations.”

When babies came, as they often did on journeys lasting six to eight months, there was little time to rest or celebrate.  The train had to continue on and usually did the same day or the next morning birthing. And, remember, these wagons had no springs.

And the prospect of birth along the trail must have been terrorizing.   I imagine these women watched the horizon anxiously in the last days of pregnancy, trying to learn whether the weather would be calm or threatening, if the wagons were near or far from water, and, most important of all, if another woman was at hand.

And often there was not. If a wagon broke down, it was left. Families were separated along the way. One huge family of some ten wagons separated into three different groups along the way. No one could wait on a damaged or overloaded wagon for fear of being caught in the mountains during early winter. Some women were seen walking along the way by themselves, their wagon and man gone through some disaster.

The danger involved in pregnancy during these years on the trail — and the early years on the frontier — is most readily evident by one pioneer daughter. She grew up with four stepmothers in succession, each one dying in childbirth.

And so it was with love and marriage on the trail.