Here’s to the women who tamed the frontier
Traditions. This time of year is all about traditions. And who are the keepers of traditions? Women. It’s women who create and kindle the memories. It’s women who tamed the frontier. Historically, it was the women who tamed the frontier. They built the church congregations. They were the school teachers, the midwives and the mothers […]
Fun on the frontier
Today people often think of homesteading as hard work mixed with some fear and boredom. Pioneer life was viewed as lonely and frightening. That’s not what I found when researching Proving Her Claim. Women homesteaders found fun and games on the frontier — and invented reasons to party. In the book Land in Her Own Name H. Elaine Lindgren […]
Women’s Suffrage on the frontier
The Women’s Suffrage Movement — the right to vote — took nearly 100 years before it was the law of the nation. In the 1820s and 1830s, men in most states could vote, regardless of whether they had property. For many historians, the Seneca Falls Convention was the turning point for Women’s Suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a […]
The congressmen laughed
The Homestead Act of 1862 was, no pun intended, landmark legislation that changed the course of our nation. Professor Hannah Haksgaard, a Property and Family Law professor at the University of South Dakota, has researched and written about the impact of the Homestead Act. One of her white papers, Including Unmarried Women in the Homestead Act of 1862, […]
Little soddy on the prairie
In her letter to her mother, Anna describes her new home: My home is what they call a “soddy.” It is small, about the same size as your dining room and kitchen, Mamma. Most of the homesteaders live in sod homes like mine. There are few trees on the prairie, so we make do. The sod […]