Plain Anne Ellis: More About the Life of an Ordinary Woman

by Anne Ellis, Catherine J. Lavender (Introduction)

Plain Anne Ellis builds on Life of an Ordinary Woman, Anne Ellis’s memoir of life in one of Colorado’s most overlooked regions, the San Luis Valley. Despite use and settlement by Utes, Hispanics, Jicarilla Apaches, and Anglos, little has been written about the rich history of this valley.
 
Ellis describes herself as an ordinary widow with few financial resources trying to make a living in an inaccessible valley. But Ellis was far from ordinary: she raised children on her own, sent them to college, worked as a cook and the only woman on crews installing telephone lines and building roads to open the San Luis Valley to development, and successfully ran for county treasurer.
 
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Ellis was her frankness. Ellis admitted that "to have been born in the Victorian era certainly cramps one’s style." She was not afraid to put into print her desire for intimacy and love. This and other observations of her life make it clear that Anne Ellis was anything but plain and ordinary.

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1931

Reviews

[Alma :) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually read it for a class. I had high hopes since I'm a fan of Colorado history, and I love reading about women. But it fell flat for me for two reasons: complete disorganization and a big cavern between here and there. It is a quick read, so if it's available, go ahead and pick it up. It isn't painful...just not exactly fantastic.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this author. There is nothing “impressive” about her prose but this is such a valuable historical document about what it was like to be a human woman in Anne’s setting. She was a marvelous lady in my option and I read all three of her books and enjoyed each one.

[Avis Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anne Ellis documents the struggle with poverty that was the lot of most women who were widowed with children before the modern era. Her father deserted her family, leaving her mother in serious straits, and Ellis duplicates this fight to survive when both her first and second husbands die.

At first, Ellis earns a living as a dressmaker, and she tells you stories about her clients ranging from the delightful to the godawful. Then she becomes a chuckwagon cook out in the rural countryside for men involved in everything from planting telephone poles to sheep-shearing. The work she puts into both her jobs is horribly grueling, and during her time as a chuckwagon cook, she even has to give medical attention to a man who had been in a serious accident that left an eyeball lying down on one of his cheeks. (A doctor managed to saved the eye).

During all this time, she raises a son and daughter, and saves money to send them to college with the hope that they could escape the drudgery of her own life. Eventually, Ellis is talked into running for the office of Country Treasurer and wins the election, and she tells what it is like to have to learn literally everything about being a treasurer right on the job. She also gives you a view of all the relentless electioneering she had to put into holding her office, canvassing the county on foot and trying to handshake and persuade every person she meets.

But after living a life that requires a limitless supply of energy, Ellis meets her toughest foe when her health collapses, and she is sent to try to recover in a sanatorium in New Mexico. Yet even then she is not utterly daunted, for she writes and publishes a volume of autobiography during this low point. The current volume, Plain Anne Ellis, is the second volume about her life.

Ellis was someone who had to provide much of her own education herself, but she was well aware of the literary world beyond her own rural life, and she's a good writer with an eye for an anecdote. Her perspective is not one you meet very often in books about frontier life. She was highly strung, very artistic, and very perceptive. Yet she was also a relentless extrovert, and this trait is what kept her going in circumstances that would have defeated most women. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to read about a women who doesn't fit into any preconceived notion that you have. Ellis was really a unique character.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne has the Balls to run for elected office in this book, and win.