Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement: Life on the Home Frontier

by Linda Peavy, Ursula Smith, John Mack Faragher (Foreword)

During the last half of the nineteenth century, thousands of men went west in search of gold, land, or adventure-leaving their wives to handle family, farm, and business affairs on their own. The experiences of these westering men have long been a part of the lore of the American frontier, but the stories of their wives have rarely been told. Ten years of research into public and private documents-including letters of couples separated during the westward movement-has enabled Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith to tell the forgotten stories of "women in waiting." Though these wives were left more or less in limbo by the departure of their adventuring husbands, they were hardly women in waiting in any other sense. Children had to be fed, clothed, housed, and educated; farms and businesses had to be managed; creditors had to be paid or pacified and, in some cases, hard-earned butter-and-egg money had to be sent west in response to letters from broke and disillusioned husbands. This raises some unsettling How does the idea of an "allowance" from home square with our long-standing image of the frontiersman as rugged individualist? To what extent was the westward movement supported by the paid and unpaid labor of women back east? And how do we measure the heroics of husbands out west against the heroics of wives back home?

Genres: History, American History, Womens

400 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1994

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very interesting. Even though I have read several books on Women who traveled west with their families on wagon trains, I never thought of women being left behind during gold rush times etc.

The Chapters are set up on the story of different women and their stories. Most times the story flows. The author of the book had to go off of letters and also had to extrapolate some info I am sure. Most times the stories captivate me, even though they are more factual tidbits of info than a narrative per se. At times, the book gets a bit slow, but it could just be that I am tired from reading that day. Like I said, it's not always a narrative per se.

Overall, I really like this book since it opened my eyes to an experience that women endured that for some reason I just never realized. Great addition to my knowledge of Pioneering/Westward moving (or staying in one spot) women.