In the winter of 1975, Joanna Stratton made a remarkable discovery. In the attic of her grandmother's home, was a set of priceless autobiographical manuscripts written by hundred of pioneer women. Ms. Stratton has rescued these to finish a project started by her great-grandmother.
Never has there been such a detailed record of women's courage or such a living portrait of the women who civilized the frontier. Their personal recollections of prairie fires, locusts plagues, cowboy shoot-outs, Indian raids, and blizzards on the plains portray vividly the dangers of pioneering.
Their work was the work of survival and it demanded as much from them as from their men-whether it found them fashioning clothes out of raw wool or homes out of sod, coaxing vegetables out of the earth or defending their cabins against raids by wolves.
Illustrated with photographs from the period, this is a beautiful, important and fascinating book as well as a priceless contribution to American history.
Never has there been such a detailed record of women's courage or such a living portrait of the women who civilized the frontier. Their personal recollections of prairie fires, locusts plagues, cowboy shoot-outs, Indian raids, and blizzards on the plains portray vividly the dangers of pioneering.
Their work was the work of survival and it demanded as much from them as from their men-whether it found them fashioning clothes out of raw wool or homes out of sod, coaxing vegetables out of the earth or defending their cabins against raids by wolves.
Illustrated with photographs from the period, this is a beautiful, important and fascinating book as well as a priceless contribution to American history.
