Since it was first published in 1932, A Frontier Lady has held a high and special place in the literature of Americas westward migration. Written in the 1880s at the request of her son, the philosopher and educator Josiah Royce, Sarah Royce's narrative of the family odyssey across the continent and of their early years in California is also the portrait of a remarkable woman. In the words of her daughter-in-law, "Wherever she was, she made civilization, even when it seemed that she had little indeed from which to make it."

An autobiographical account of Sarah Royce's journey across the United States in the early days of the California gold rush.

Ranging from Georgia's founding in the 1730s until the American Revolution in the 1770s, Georgia's Frontier Women explores women's changing roles amid the developing demographic, economic, and social circumstances of the colony's settling. Georgia was launched as a unique experiment on the borderlands of the British Atlantic world. Its female population was far more diverse than any in nearby colonies at comparable times in their formation. Ben Marsh tells a complex story of narrowing opportunities for Georgia's women as the colony evolved from uncertainty toward stability in the face of sporadic warfare, changes in government, land speculation, and the arrival of slaves and immigrants in growing numbers. Marsh looks at the experiences of white, black, and Native American women-old and young, married and single, working in and out of the home. Mary Musgrove, who played a crucial role in mediating colonist-Creek relations, and Marie Camuse, a leading figure in Georgia's early silk industry, are among the figures whose life stories Marsh draws on to illustrate how some frontier women broke down economic barriers and wielded authority in exceptional ways. Marsh also looks at how basic assumptions about courtship, marriage, and family varied over time. To early settlers, for example, the search for stability could take them across race, class, or community lines in search of a suitable partner. This would change as emerging elites enforced the regulation of traditional social norms and as white relationships with blacks and Native Americans became more exploitive and adversarial. Many of the qualities that earlier had distinguished Georgia from other southern colonies faded away.

An Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People Using journal entries, letters home, and song lyrics, the women of the West speak for themselves in these tales of courage, enduring spirit, and adventure. Women such as Amelia Stewart Knight traveling on the Oregon Trail, homesteader Miriam Colt, entrepreneur Clara Brown, army wife Frances Grummond, actress Adah Isaacs Menken, naturalist Martha Maxwell, missionary Narcissa Whitman, and political activist Mary Lease are introduced to readers through their harrowing stories of journeying across the plains and mountains to unknown land. Recounting the impact pioneers had on those who were already living in the region as well as how they adapted to their new lives and the rugged, often dangerous landscape, this exploration also offers resources for further study and reveals how these influential women tamed the Wild West.

Noting how Jackie's celebrity and devotion to privacy have for years precluded a more serious treatment, Perry's story illuminates Kennedy's immeasurable impact on the institution of the first lady. Perry illustrates the complexities of Jacqueline Bouvier's marriage to John F. Kennedy, and shows how she transformed herself from a reluctant political wife to an effective, confident presidential partner. Perry is especially illuminating in tracing the first lady's mastery of political symbolism and imagery, along with her use of television and state entertainment to disseminate her work to a global audience.

This is the first biography of Dell Burke, whose estate sale drew national attention when she died in 1981 at age 93. Painstakingly researched for over five years, June Willson Read’s landmark history tells the story of a broken young woman who saw opportunities in the Alaskan gold rush, the copper mines in Montana and the oil fields in Wyoming. But it wasn’t mining that made Burke’s fortune – she focused on the entertainment needs of the lonely men who poured into the uncharted west to strike it rich. In 1919, the genteel and gracious Burke opened the Yellow Hotel brothel in Lusk, Wyoming, where she reigned for six decades, until 1978. Although condemned for her profession, she was beloved for her generosity and her devotion to the community. For example, during the Depression, Burke financed Lusk’s water-power system and single-handedly saved the town from going bankrupt. Read interviewed locals, historians, and Burke descendents to present a fascinating story of a little-known entrepreneurial powerhouse.

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.

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.

Discover the stories of twelve women who heard the call to settle the west and who came from all points of the globe to begin their journey. The author ties the stories of these pioneer women to the experiences of women today with the hope that they will be inspired to live boldly and bravely and to fill their own lives with vision, faith, and fortitude. To live with grit.

The prequel to the New York Times bestseller The Texan Sprawling 1840s Texas comes alive in the hands of Joan Johnston, New York Times bestselling author of The Cowboy and The Texan. Introducing the unforgettable Creed dynasty, transporting us back to a wild, lawless frontier, Johnston brings us a stirring, passionate story of Texas Ranger Jarrett Creed and the free-spirited beauty who captures his heart—a woman sworn to love no man. FRONTIER WOMAN Captured by Comanches as a boy, Jarrett Creed grew to manhood torn between two worlds. But with the young republic under siege from ravaging Mexican armies and marauding Indian tribes alike, he made his choice. Now, as a secret government mission brings the Texas Ranger to lovely Cricket Stewart’s door, he must choose again. The youngest daughter of a wealthy gentleman planter, Cricket lives life as she pleases and vows never to be a wife to any man. Until the day Jarrett Creed saves her from avenging Comanches . . . by claiming her as his bride. The last thing either expects is to fall in love. But as a traitorous conspiracy and a secret tragedy test their newfound union, a wild-spirited beauty and a Texas lawman will discover just how far they will go for their precious homeland—and for a love that could free them from the sorrows of the past.