Best of Covered Wagon Women

Best of Covered Wagon Women
Author: Kenneth L. Holmes
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-10-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0806183020

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The diaries and letters of women on the overland trails in the mid- to late nineteenth century are treasured documents. These eleven selections drawn from the multivolume Covered Wagon Women series present the best first-person trail accounts penned by women in their teens who traveled west between 1846 and 1898. Ranging in age from eleven to nineteen, unmarried and without children of their own, these diarists had experiences different from those of older women who carried heavier responsibilities with them on the trail. These letters and diaries reflect both the unique perspective of youthful optimism and the experiences common among all female emigrants. The young women write of friendship and family, trail hardships, and explorations such as visits to Indian gravesites. Some like Sallie Hester even write of enjoying the company of men, and many speculate about marriage prospects. Domestic roles did not define the girls’ trail experience; only the four oldest in this collection recorded helping with chores. As they journey through Indian lands, these writers show that even their youth did not prevent them from holding notions of white racial superiority. Two of the selections are newly published, having appeared only in limited-distribution collector’s editions of the original series. For all readers captivated by the first Best of Covered Wagon Women collection, this new volume’s focus on youthful travelers adds a fresh perspective to life on the trail.

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 1

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 1
Author: Kenneth L. Holmes
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496225546

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The women who traveled west in covered wagons during the 1840s speak through these letters and diaries. Here are the voices of Tamsen Donner and young Virginia Reed, members of the ill-fated Donner party; Patty Sessions, the Mormon midwife who delivered five babies on the trail between Omaha and Salt Lake City; Rachel Fisher, who buried both her husband and her little girl before reaching Oregon. Still others make themselves heard, starting out from different places and recording details along the way, from the mundane to the soul-shattering and spirit-lifting.

Covered Wagon Women: 1852, The California Trail

Covered Wagon Women: 1852, The California Trail
Author: Kenneth L. Holmes
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780803272910

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In 1852 a record number of women helped keep the wagons rolling over the perilous western trails. The fourth volume of Covered Wagon Women is devoted to families headed for California that year. Diaries and letters of six pioneer women describe the rigors en route, trailside celebrations and tragedies, the scourge of cholera, and encounters with the Indians.

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 11

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 11
Author: Kenneth L. Holmes
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803273009

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The stories seem simple?they left, they traveled, they settled?yet the restless westering impulse of Americans created one of the most enduring figures in our frontier pantheon: theøhardy pioneer persevering against all odds. Undeterred by storms, ruthless bandits, towering mountains, and raging epidemics, the women in these volumes suggest why the pioneer represented the highest ideals and aspirations of a young nation. In this concluding volume of the Covered Wagon Women series, we see the final animal-powered overland migrations that were even then yielding to railroad travel and, in a few short years, to the automobile. The diaries and letters resonate with the vigor and spirit that made possible the settling and community-building of the American West.

Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey

Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey
Author: Lillian Schlissel
Publisher: Schocken
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2011-08-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307803171

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An expanded edition of one of the most original and provocative works of American history of the last decade, which documents the pioneering experiences and grit of American frontier women.

Best of Covered Wagon Women

Best of Covered Wagon Women
Author: Kenneth L. Holmes
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2014-10-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0806182997

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The diaries and letters of women who braved the overland trails during the great nineteenth-century westward migration are treasured documents in the study of the American West. These eight firsthand accounts are among the best ever written. They were selected for the power with which they portray the hardship, adventure, and boundless love for friends and family that characterized the overland experience. Some were written with the skilled pens of educated women. Others bear the marks of crude cabin learning, with archaic and imaginative spelling and a simplicity of expression. All convey the profound effect the westward trek had on these women. For too long these diaries and letters were secreted away in attics and basements or collected dust on the shelves of manuscript collections across the country. Their publication gives us a fresh perspective on the pioneer experience.

Covered Wagon Women

Covered Wagon Women
Author: Kenneth L. Holmes
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803272774

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Offers the writings and recollections of thirteen Anglo women who traveled to the American West in the 1840s, taken from their letters and diaries, and reflecting the political, social, and economic forces of the era.

Diary of Sallie Hester

Diary of Sallie Hester
Author: Sallie Hester
Publisher: Capstone
Total Pages: 33
Release: 2014
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1476541930

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"Presents excerpts from the diary of Sallie Hester, a teenager who traveled West on the Oregon Trail in a wagon train in the mid-1800s"--

Pioneer Women

Pioneer Women
Author: Joanna L. Stratton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-05-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1476753598

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From a rediscovered collection of autobiographical accounts written by hundreds of Kansas pioneer women in the early twentieth century, Joanna Stratton has created a collection hailed by Newsweek as “uncommonly interesting” and “a remarkable distillation of primary sources.” Never before has there been such a detailed record of women’s courage, such a living portrait of the women who civilized the American frontier. Here are their stories: wilderness mothers, schoolmarms, Indian squaws, immigrants, homesteaders, and circuit riders. Their personal recollections of prairie fires, locust plagues, cowboy shootouts, Indian raids, and blizzards on the plains vividly reveal the drama, danger and excitement of the pioneer experience. These were women of relentless determination, whose tenacity helped them to conquer loneliness and privation. Their work was the work of survival, it demanded as much from them as from their men—and at last that partnership has been recognized. “These voices are haunting” (The New York Times Book Review), and they reveal the special heroism and industriousness of pioneer women as never before.

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 2

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 2
Author: Kenneth L. Holmes
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496225562

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The women who traveled west in covered wagons during the 1840s speak through these letters and diaries. Here are the voices of Tamsen Donner and young Virginia Reed, members of the ill-fated Donner party; Patty Sessions, the Mormon midwife who delivered five babies on the trail between Omaha and Salt Lake City; Rachel Fisher, who buried both her husband and her little girl before reaching Oregon. Still others make themselves heard, starting out from different places and recording details along the way, from the mundane to the soul-shattering and spirit-lifting.