This is a collection of personal accounts, set down in often work-worn hands, from Kansas women who braved the pioneer years of settling in the United States. These combined historical stories bring to light such incidents as women having babies alone, except for others of their small children and a family dog, within the unsanitary walls of a sod house. Their daily trials often included prairie fires, hoards of grasshoppers that devoured every thing in sight, Indian raids and blizzards.
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They arrived on the Kansas Plains in every shape, dress size and social attitude as well as education or the lack of it. They were mothers and wives, schoolmarms and Indian squaws. Some were immigrants, new to the country. Some arrived as new brides, or were married shortly after coming to Kansas with a wedding in the morning and a garden to plant in the afternoon. Some of these women, finding the homesteading life not to their liking turned to outlawry or, as towns grew, turned to working in saloons and prostitution. In direct opposite of these, some fought to do away with the saloons and drinking, while others fought another battle, that of the right of women to vote.
The review of this Book prepared by Mary Trotter Kion