“One of those neighbors recalled a particular day during the bitterly cold winter of 1839–40. Elizabeth Graves had come by to deliver some butter, and, finding the neighbor with a newborn infant, she stayed for several hours to help with the household chores. As in every frontier community, the women of Lacon and Sparland lived within a kind of mutual-aid society—a circle of women with whom they could share burdens and confidences in a way that they could not share them with the men in their lives.”