Complete with actual advertisements from both women seeking husbands and males seeking brides, New York Times bestselling book Hearts West includes twelve stories of courageous mail order brides and their exploits. Some were fortunate enough to marry good men and live happily ever after; still others found themselves in desperate situations that robbed them of their youth and sometimes their lives. Desperate to strike it rich during the Gold Rush, men sacrificed many creature comforts. Only after they arrived did some of them realize how much they missed female companionship. One way for men living on the frontier to meet women was through subscriptions to heart-and-hand clubs. The men received newspapers with information, and sometimes photographs, about women, with whom they corresponded. Eventually, a man might convince a woman to join him in the West, and in matrimony. Social status, political connections, money, companionship, or security were often considered more than love in these arrangements.

If countless books and movies are to be believed, America's Wild West was, at heart, a world of cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and gunslingers, scruffy settlers and mountain men—a man's world. Here, Chris Enss, in the latest of her popular books to take on this stereotype, tells the stories of twelve courageous women who faced down schoolrooms full of children on the open prairies and in the mining towns of the Old West. Between 1847 and 1858, more than 600 women teachers traveled across the untamed frontier to provide youngsters with an education, and the numbers grew rapidly in the decades to come, as women took advantage of one of the few career opportunities for respectable work for ladies of the era. Enduring hardship, the dozen women whose stories are movingly told in the pages of Frontier Teachers demonstrated the utmost dedication and sacrifice necessary to bring formal education to the Wild West. As immortalized in works of art and literature, for many students their women teachers were heroic figures who introduced them to a world of possibilities—and changed America forever.

The discovery of gold in the southern Black Hills in 1874 set off one of the great gold rushes in America. In 1876, miners moved into the northern Black Hills. That's where they came across a gulch full of dead trees and a creek full of gold and Deadwood was born. Practically overnight, the tiny gold camp boomed into a town that played by its own rules that attracted outlaws, gamblers and gunslingers along with the gold seekers. Deadwood was comprised mostly of single men, a ration of men to women as high as 8 to 1, never less than 3 to 1.The lack of affordable housing, the hostile environment, the high cost of travel, and the expense of living in Deadwood prevented many men from bringing their wives, girlfriends and families to the growing town. Hoards of prostitutes and madams came to Deadwood to capitalize on the lack of women. By the mid-1880s, there were more than a hundred fifty brothels in the mining community. The most notorious cat house in Deadwood was owned and operated by Al Swearengen. Swearengen was an entertainment entrepreneur who opened the house of ill-reputed shortly after he arrived in town in the spring of 1876.Initially known as The Gem, the brothel was host to a number of well-known soiled doves of the Old West from Eleanor Dumont to Nita Celaya. The brothel was in continual operation for more than sixty years. The business changed hands a number of times during the six decades it was in existence. Among the many madams who ran the cat house were Poker Alice Tubbs, Mert O'Hara, and Gertrude Bell. The business also changed names a number of times. It was known as Fern's Place, The Combination, and The Meoldian. When the brothel officially closed in 1956, it was known as The Beige Door. In the spring of 2022, The Beige Door will once again be open for business. This time as a museum. The South Dakota Historical Society have invested in refurbishing the brothel and making it ready for the public to tour. The book Deadwood's Red-Light Ladies: Behind the Beige Door will focus on the infamous cat house, those that managed the business, their employees, its well-known clientele, the various crimes committed at the location, and its ultimate demise.

A New York Times Bestseller! "No women need apply." Western towns looking for a local doctor during the frontier era often concluded their advertisements in just that manner. Yet apply they did. And in small towns all over the West, highly trained women from medical colleges in the East took on the post of local doctor to great acclaim. In this new book, author Chris Enss offers a glimpse into the fascinating lives of fourteen of these amazing women. This edition includes 4 new chapters on pioneering female physicians.

More Tales Behind the Tombstones tells the stories behind the deaths (or supposed deaths) and burials of even more of the Old West's most nefarious outlaws, notorious women, and celebrated lawmen. Readers will learn the stories behind these legendary characters and visit the sites of tombs long forgotten while legends have lived on. Read about the lives (and deaths) of fearless, famous lawmen such as Bass Reeves, Chalk Beeson, Bill Tilghman, and Pat Garrett; learn about the dauntless women who blazed new paths for their sex in medicine, journalism, entertainment, and voting rights; and discover the intriguing facts and myths that continue to circulate about these and other infamous characters long after their grave markers have become worn down or simply lost to time.

History has a way of bestowing a more lasting immortality on important people who die at the height of their earthly achievements. Famous personalities who are cut down at the height of their fame leave people clamoring to know more about them. Books and songs are written about them. Pictorial mementoes and keepsakes are in demand. The celebrated military figure General George Armstrong Custer, whose life ended so abruptly, is no exception. Interest in him, and those associated with him, has never diminished with the passing time. Elizabeth Bacon Custer, George's faithful wife, and more than two dozen women who lost their husbands at the Battle of Little Big Horn, fall into that category. Elizabeth Bacon Custer set the social tone at Fort Lincoln, Nebraska, where she and twenty-five other women were living when their spouses perished in June 1876. She helped the ladies deal with the difficulties of life on the Plains; how to handle frostbite, how to treat heat prostration due to the suffocating amount of clothing, how to obtain water through holes cut in the ice of lakes or rivers, and how best to entertain themselves while waiting for their husbands to return from a campaign. When a soldier left the fort, his wife never knew if he would return. Eliza Porter, wife of 1st Lieutenant Colonel I. Porter of Custer's 7th Cavalry, described the last get-together Elizabeth Custer hosted for the officers and their families this way. "Here are those nice fellows gathered around the Custer's table, all discussing the situation and all knowing they will never all come back. One leaves his watch and little fixings and says, 'if one of those bullets gets me, send this to my wife waiting for me in Independence.' One need not search any further to unearth the reason why "Boots and Saddles," the call to battle written by Elizabeth Custer, struck terror into the hearts of Army wives. Each wondered if she would be widowed or if the role of widowhood would be forced upon her friends. After the men were assembled, they rode out proudly to the strains of "The Girl I Left Behind Me." In order to hide their tears and anxiety from their husbands, many wives did as Elizabeth Porter did; they refused to watch the column's ride away from the fort. They preferred to say goodbye behind closed doors. Fear and weeping were private. Nine months after the massacre at Custer's Last Stand, Elizabeth Custer scheduled a reunion with the widows of the Little Big Horn. On June 25, 1887, the women met in Monroe, Michigan, to reflect on the events leading up to the battle, remember the loved ones that were killed, and share how they have been able to go on. The widows got together every year for more than twenty years. In between reunions they corresponded with each other, exchanged photographs, and supported one another through the difficult times. The never-before-seen materials that will be used to write the book entitled Elizabeth Custer and the Widows of the Little Big Horn will be provided by the curators of the Elizabeth Custer Library and Museum at Garryowen, Montana; an example of some of the historical materials that will be provided include letters between Elizabeth Custer and the other widows, letters to and from politicians and the widows supporting and criticizing General Custer, and agendas and pictures of the widows at the annual meetings. There have been many books written about General George Custer and a handful have been penned about Elizabeth Bacon Custer, but there have been nothing written about the widows of the Last Stand. This will be a first.

An Englishwoman born in 1831, Isabella Bird was frequently ill as a child and young woman, and her doctors recommended a life of travel and fresh air as the cure. Ultimately, she took the advice and traveled the world. And traveled. And traveled. Bird connected with the beauty of the Colorado Plains and the valleys and mountain parks that she found exhilarating. She would be the first woman to stand atop Colorado's Longs Peak, in 1873. While in Colorado she spent most of her time in Estes Park, but she traveled to Garden of the Gods, across South Park and through many of the mining towns. More than just traveling, she engaged the places she visited and the people she encountered. In the Rockies, Bird became acquainted with a local character, the mountain man known as "Rocky Mountain Jim," who would guide her up Longs Peak. Jim Nugent was a one-eyed ruffian of whom Isabella would write to her sister (in a paragraph excised from the published version of the letters) "A man any woman might love but no sane woman would marry." Bird referred to Nugent as her "dear desperado," and the mountain man seemingly had great affection for Bird, as well. Bird was 41 and single when she entered Colorado on September 9, 1873; she was 42 and still single when she left Colorado on December 12. Less than a year later, Nugent was shot and killed. This new book reveals the story of Bird's year in Colorado and her relationship with Nugent by re-examining Bird's letters to her beloved sister and putting her work in historical context.

Principles of Posse Management tells the stories of the lawmen and leaders of the Old West who organized citizens in the pursuit of law and order. This collection of tales reveals what Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and other legends of the old west knew about leadership with a clever twist on the classic shoot-em-up, black-hats-vs-white-hats tale.

In 1869, more than twenty years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony made their declaration of the rights of woman at Seneca Falls, New York, the men of the Wyoming Territorial Legislature granted women over the age of 21 the right to vote in general elections. And on September 6, 1870, a grandmother named Eliza Swain stepped up to a ballet box in Laramie, Wyoming, and became the first woman in the United States to exercise that right, ushering in the era of Western states' early foray into suffrage equality. Wyoming Territory's motives for extending the vote to women might have had more to do with publicity and attracting female settlers than with any desire to establish a more egalitarian society. However, individual men's interests in the idea of women's rights had their roots in diverse ideologies, and the women who agitated for those rights were equally diverse in their attitudes. No Place for a Woman explores the history of the fight for women's rights in the West, examining the conditions that prevailed during the vast migration of pioneers looking for free land and opportunity on the frontier, the politics of the emerging Western territories at the end of the Civil War, and the changing social and economic conditions of the country recovering from war and on the brink of the Gilded Age. The stories of the women who helped settle the west and who ushered in voting rights decades ahead of the 19th Amendment and the stories of the country they were forging in the west will be of great interest to readers as the 100th anniversary of national woman suffrage approaches and is relevant in our current political climate. Revealed through the individual stories of women like Esther Hobart Morris, Martha Cannon, and Jeannette Rankin, this book fills a hole in the story of the West, revealing the real story of how the hard work and individual lobbying of a few heroines, plus a little bit of publicity-seeking and opportunism by promoters of the Wyoming Territory, ushered in a new era for the expansion of women's rights.

The Oklahoma Historical Society Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History for 2012. A riveting biography of a little-known Native-American who shaped history-complete with shootouts, romance, intrigue, and a little politics.

A kind hearted ranch hand stops to help a family in need and discovers the meaning of Christmas just when he thinks hes missed the holiday all together.

From Catherine Hayes, the "Irish prima donna," and Maude Adams, "the most popular actress in America," to the legendary Sarah Bernhardt, Gilded Girls profiles fourteen of the liveliest, wildest, and most talented female entertainers ever to light up the boards of the western frontier. You'll meet "the Jersey Lily," who was wildly admired by men as various Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Diamond Jim Brady, and Judge Roy Bean; Mrs. Leslie Carter, a scandal-plagued society women who became a famous actress as an act of revenge against her patrician ex-husband; a French-Creole beauty known as the "Frenzy of Frisco" who took up the Zionist and feminist causes in between her daring acting roles; and "Klondike Kate," a flame-haired entertainer who took Alaska's gold rush country by storm but suffered a very public heartbreak.
Some of the fascinating women are renowned even to this day, others are remembered only in the pages of history, but all personified the daring, colorful, and independent spirit of the Old West.

Doc Holliday’s paramour Big Nose Kate could never get a publisher to give her the big bucks she demanded to tell the story of her life, but that didn’t mean she didn’t collect material she wanted to use in a biography. Over the fifty years Mary Kate Cummings, alias Big Nose Kate, traversed the West she saved letters from her family, musings she had written about her love interests, and life with the notorious John Henry Holliday. Using rare, never before published material Big Nose Kate stock-piled in anticipation of writing the tale of her days on the Wild Frontier, the definitive book about the famous soiled dove will finally be told. Kate claims to have witnessed the Gunfight at the OK Corral and exchanged words with the likes of Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcs. There’s no doubt she embellished her adventures, but that doesn’t take away from their historical importance. She was a controversial figure in a rough and rowdy territory. What she witnessed, the lifestyle she led, and the influential western people she met are fascinating and represent a time period much romanticized.

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West's most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled doves, and other wicked women by award-winning Western history author Chris Enss offers a glimpse into Western Women's experience that's less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. During the late nineteenth century, while men were settling the new frontier and rushing off to the latest boom towns, women of easy virtue found wicked lives west of the Mississippi when they followed fortune hunters seeking gold and land in an unsettled territory. Prostitutes and female gamblers hoped to capitalize on the vices of the intrepid pioneers. Pulling together stories of ladies caught in the acts of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, it will include famous names like Belle Starr and Big Nose Kate, as well as lesser known characters.

Colorado Territory in 1864 wasn't merely the wild west, it was a land in limbo while the Civil War raged in the east and politics swirled around its potential admission to the union. The territorial governor, John Evans, had ambitions on the national stage should statehood occur--and he was joined in those ambitions by a local pastor and erstwhile Colonel in the Colorado militia, John Chivington. The decision was made to take a hard line stance against any Native Americans who refused to settle on reservations--and in the fall of 1864, Chivington set his sights on a small band of Cheyenne under the chief Black Eagle, camped and preparing for the winter at Sand Creek. When the order to fire on the camp came on November 28, one officer refused, other soldiers in Chivington's force, however, immediately attacked the village, disregarding the American flag, and a white flag of surrender that was run up shortly after the soldiers commenced firing. In the ensuing "battle" fifteen members of the assembled militias were killed and more than 50 wounded Between 150 and 200 of Black Kettle's Cheyenne were estimated killed, nearly all elderly men, women and children. As with many incidents in American history, the victors wrote the first version of history--turning the massacre into a heroic feat by the troops. Soon thereafter, however, Congress began an investigation into Chivington's actions and he was roundly condemned. His name still rings with infamy in Colorado and American history. Mochi's War explores this story and its repercussions into the last part of the nineteenth Century from the perspective of a Cheyenne woman whose determination swept her into some of the most dramatic and heartbreaking moments in the conflicts that grew through the West in the aftermath of Sand Creek.

The true story of Kate Warne and the other women who served as Pinkertons, fulfilling the adage, "Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History." Most students of the Old West and American law enforcement history know the story of the notorious and ruthless Pinkerton Detective Agency and the legends behind their role in establishing the Secret Service and tangling with Old West Outlaws. But the true story of Kate Warne, an operative of the Pinkerton Agency and the first woman detective in America-and the stories of the other women who served their country as part of the storied crew of crime fighters-are not well known. For the first time, the stories of these intrepid women are collected here and richly illustrated throughout with numerous historical photographs. From Kate Warne's probable affair with Allan Pinkerton, and her part in saving the life of Abraham Lincoln in 1861 to the lives and careers of the other women who broke out of the Cult of True Womanhood in pursuit of justice, these true stories add another dimension to our understanding of American history.

Was Arizona Donnie Clark, AKA Kate "Ma" Barker the mastermind behind the Barker gang terrorizing the Midwest during the early years of the great Depression? Or was she a terrible mother who urged her sons to criminal behavior for her own financial gain? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between. This lively retelling of the legend of Ma Barker and her boys is full of action, intrigue, and the answers to mysteries that have lingered for more than 70 years.

The Gold Rush West was dotted with mining boomtowns and bustling new cities that sprang up overnight around strikes. Fortunes were made and lost daily, lawlessness was commonplace, and gambling dens, saloons, brothels, and dance halls thrived, but after a while the miners and merchants began to long for more polished amusements. Soon, theatres popped up in tents and then auditoriums and playhouses were built where operas, arias, and Shakespeare were performed by brave actors, dancers, singers, and daredevils who were lured by the call of the West. Many of the most popular women entertainers of the mid-and late-1800s performed in the boomtowns that dotted the West, drawn by the same desire for riches that took miners and merchants there, and bringing a variety of talents and programs. Though they were sometimes literally showered with gold, their personal lives were often marked by tragedy and unhappiness. These stories reveal the entertaining side, but also some of the hardship of the American West.

It was the golden age of baseball, and all over the country teams gathered on town fields in front of throngs of fans to compete for local glory. In Rawlins, Wyoming, residents lined up for tickets to see slugger Joseph Seng and the rest of the Wyoming Penitentiary Death Row All Stars as they took on all comers in baseball games with considerably more at stake. Teams came from Reno, Nevada; Klamath Falls, Oregon; Bodie, California; and throughout the west to take on the murderers who made up the line-up. This is a fun and wildly dramatic and suspenseful look at the game of baseball and at the thrilling events that unfolded at a prison in the wide-open Wyoming frontier in pursuit of wins on the diamond.

From Calamity Jane's relentless pursuit of Wild Bill Hickok to Emma Walters, who gave it all up for the dashing Bat Masterson--and learned to regret it, these romantic stories from the Old West are still familiar and entertaining to readers today. Meet Agnes Lake Hickok, the intrepid wife of Wild Bill Hickok and learn about the last love letter he sent before being dealt the dead man's hand. Learn the story behind the charming performer Lotta Crabtree's heartaches. And discover the tale of the dashing Kit Carson and his beautiful bride. This collection features the lessons learned by and from the antics of the women who shaped the West.

Massacres, mayhem, and mischief fill the pages of "Outlaw Tales of California 2," with compelling legends of the Golden State's most despicable desperadoes. Ride with horse thieves and cattle rustlers, duck the bullets of murderers, plot strategies with con artists, and hiss at lawmen turned outlaws.

"What we want to do is give our women even more liberty than they have. Let them do any kind of work that they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay."--William F. Cody, 1899

With rough-riding cowboys, sure shots, and fantastic reenactments of battles and train robberies, Buffalo Bill Cody brought the myth of the Old West to life for audiences all over the world--and some of the most popular cowboys in his Wild West Show were young ladies. Cody surrounded himself with strong, intelligent, talented, beautiful women--and this revealing portrait tells the stories of his life and of his relationships with many of the trick riders, sharpshooters, and other women associated with the show for which he was famous.