The official trail diary of pioneer woman, Sarah Jane Rousseau. For Sarah Jane Rousseau, an accomplished pianist from New Castle Upon Tyne, this seven-month journey means leaving all her gentrified comforts behind. It‘s a sacrifice she is willing to make, however, if she ever wants to walk again. After years of trying everything he could for his wife, Dr. James Rousseau is desperate to find a cure for Sarah’s debilitating rheumatism. He hopes that a climate cure in the warm, dry air of California might be the answer she needs. While the Civil War is raging in the east, the Rousseaus join with three other families from Pella, Iowa to make the arduous covered wagon journey across the American Plains. Along the way, tensions run high under the stern captaincy of Sgt. Nicholas P. Earp. While crossing through Idaho Territory, unsuspecting emigrants are caught in the crossfire of angry Northern Plains Indians. In Utah, Mormons put Dr. James to the test while sickness runs rampant. When they leave, Paiute Chief Kanosh sends them with a guide who leads the Pella Company across the desolate Mohave Desert and into the Valley of Fire. By the time they reach the Sierra Nevada, food and water supplies are exhausted and every bit of ammunition is spent. When the Rousseaus can go no further, the Pella Company leaves them stranded in Winter. In the only complete, surviving account from the Pella Company, read how the Iowans face fierce enemies, quicksand, hailstorms, poison water, and the blazing sun. Feel the budding romance between youths. See who has enough mettle to survive. And meet the surprise heroes who restore the emigrants’ faith in humanity. Sarah Jane Rousseau captures every exquisite detail in this precious family heirloom; now, a treasured tale of American History.

For Sarah Jane Rousseau, an accomplished pianist from New Castle Upon Tyne, this seven-month journey means leaving all her gentrified comforts behind. It‘s a sacrifice she is willing to make, however, if she ever wants to walk again. After years of trying everything he could for his wife, Dr. James Rousseau is desperate to find a cure for Sarah’s debilitating rheumatism. He hopes that a climate cure in the warm, dry air of California might be the answer she needs. While the Civil War is raging in the east, the Rousseaus join with three other families from Pella, Iowa to make the arduous covered wagon journey across the American Plains. Along the way, tensions run high under the stern captaincy of Sgt. Nicholas P. Earp. In Idaho Territory, unsuspecting emigrants are caught in the crossfire of angry Northern Plains Indians. In Utah, Mormons put Dr. James to the test while sickness runs rampant. When they leave, Paiute Chief Kanosh sends them with a guide who leads the Pella Company across the desolate Mohave Desert and into the Valley of Fire. By the time they reach the Sierra Nevada, food and water supplies are exhausted and every bit of ammunition spent. When the Rousseaus can go no further, the Pella Company leaves them stranded in Winter. In the only complete, surviving account from the Pella Company, read how the Iowans face fierce enemies, quicksand, hailstorms, poison water, and the blazing sun. Feel the budding romance between youths. See who has enough mettle to survive. And meet the surprise heroes who restore the emigrants’ faith in humanity. Sarah Jane Rousseau captures every exquisite detail in this family heirloom; now, a treasured tale of American History.

An anthology of harrowing and insightful poems written in 1932 by Martha Hedwig Nasch, patient-inmate #20864 at the St. Peter State Hospital for the Insane. After noticing something strange from a secret medical procedure in 1927, St. Paul, Minnesota, Martha Nasch's doctor claimed she just had a "case of nerves." With a signature from her adulterous husband, Martha was committed against her will to the asylum. She spent nearly seven years in the Minnesota hospital during the Great Depression and tried to escape twice. Martha's poems written from behind bars include shocking eyewitness accounts of patient mistreatment and a long-suffering adoration for her only child, now being raised alone by her deceiving spouse. When not a soul believed Martha's story, she sought an explanation for her mysterious condition that led her to a spiritual answer for the mystifying curse. Would her findings make her a metaphysical guru of the Breatharian lifestyle, or would she become the laughingstock of her Depression-era family? Editing and arrangement by Martha's great-granddaughter, Janelle Molony, with an introduction by Jodi Nasch Decker, granddaughter and family historian. More than fifty photographs and illustrations are included with the historical research that accompanies this beautiful collection of poems. Learn more at JanelleMolony.com

While the Civil War raged in the east, the Platte River Raids would begin an entirely new battle for the American West. In July of 1864, Northern Plains Indians in Idaho Territory (Wyoming) appeared to be on a warpath to cease all emigrant travel on the Bozeman, Oregon, and Overland Trails by any means. On a signal, hundreds of warriors launched a series of attacks and robberies on unsuspecting emigrants through the winding “Black Hills.” Shots rang out and arrows whizzed as miners, doctors, farmers, families, and war widows rallied their covered wagons together. Some fought to defend their stock and protect their families. Others helped bury the bodies of those who did not survive. Read the eyewitness testimonies of nearly 70 survivors, vetted by living descendants, mapped out, annotated, and presented in one accord for the first time in literary history.

This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions. Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her Subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works. In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.

During the last nine months of the Civil War, virtually all of the news reports and President Jefferson Davis’s correspondence confirmed the imminent demise of the Confederate States, the nation Davis had striven to uphold since 1861. But despite defeat after defeat on the battlefield, a recalcitrant Congress, nay-sayers in the press, disastrous financial conditions, failures in foreign policy and peace efforts, and plummeting national morale, Davis remained in office and tried to maintain the government—even after the fall of Richmond on April 2—until his capture by Union forces on May 10, 1865. The eleventh volume of The Papers of Jefferson Davis follows these tumultuous last months of the Confederacy and illuminates Davis’s policies, feelings, ideas, and relationships, as well as the viewpoints of hundreds of southerners—critics and supporters—who asked favors, pointed out abuses, and offered advice on myriad topics. Printed here for the first time are many speeches and a number of new letters and telegrams. In the course of the volume, Robert E. Lee officially becomes general in chief, Joseph E. Johnston is given a final command, legislation is enacted to place slaves in the army as soldiers, and peace negotiations are opened at the highest levels. The closing pages chronicle Davis’s dramatic flight from Richmond, including emotional correspondence with his wife as the two endeavor to find each other en route and make plans for the future in the wreckage of their lives. The holdings of seventy different manuscript repositories and private collections in addition to numerous published sources contribute to Volume 11, the fifth in the Civil War period.

In her diary, Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate general and aid to president Jefferson Davis, James Chestnut, Jr., presents an eyewitness account of the Civil War.