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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.
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.
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.
A crumbling headstone in the cemetery at Bodie, California,
memorializes Rosa May, a prostitute still known for caring for the
sick. In Deadwood, South Dakota, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill
Hickok, infamous to the end, lie interred side by side, per Jane's
last request. And at the top of Lookout Mountain in Colorado lies
the greatest western showman of all time, Buffalo Bill Cody, his
grave site visited by thousands every year. Simple stones, roadside
crosses, and grand monuments commemorate the lives of those
ordinary citizens and larger-than-life characters who tamed the
Wild West and exemplified its greatest myths. In "Tales Behind the
Tombstones," author Chris Enss shares the stories behind their
lives, deaths, and burials.
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.
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.
Long before the screen placed the face of Mary Pickford before the
eyes of millions of Americans, this girl, born August 13, 1860 as
Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses, had won the right to the title of
"America's Sweetheart." Having grown up learning to shoot game to
help support her family, Annie won first prize and met her future
husband at a shooting match when she was fifteen years old. He
convinced her to change her name to Annie Oakley and became her
husband, manager, and number-one fan for the next fifty years.
Annie quickly gained worldwide fame as an incredible crack shot,
and could amaze audiences at her uncanny accuracy with nearly any
rifle or pistol, whether aiming at stationary objects or shooting
fast-flying targets from the cockpit of a moving airplane. Despite
struggles with her health and even a long, drawn-out legal battle
with media magnate William Randolph Hearst, Annie Oakley poured her
energy into advocating for the U.S. military, encouraging women to
engage in sport shooting, and supporting orphans.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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