Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories, 1857-1866

by Mollie Dorsey Sanford and Mollie Dorsey Sanford

Book Overview

Mollie is a vivid, high-spirited, and intensely feminine account of city people homesteading in the raw, new land west of the Missouri. More particularly, it is the story of Mollie herself - just turned eighteen when the Dorseys left Indianapolis for Nebraska Territory - of her reaction to the transplantation and to her new life which included rattlesnakes, blizzards, Indians, and the hardships of pioneer life. Mollie describes her nearly three-year...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803293070
• ISBN13: 9780803293076
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 199 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

History Buff

Doctor Danker was one of my favorite history professors and a man who loved the story of the westward movement with a passion and with a down-to-earth human persepective. Though he passed on nearly a year ago, I still can see him in my mind's eye lecturing about the move west while standing before us in his somewhat rumpled brown suit, bathed in the fall afternoon sun with his head thrown back, his graying shock of hair standing up a bit and his eyes closed as he told us a story. He was wonderful at discovering and using journals to illustrate the lives and times. In my senior year he set me to reading the journals of the Agent for the Pawnee Reservation on the Loup Fork in Nebraska. He was a Nebraska native and had a special affinity for the stories from that state. I have an old copy of this book and it is a treasure to me not only for it's fascinating content and it's own story, but because of the memory of Dr. Danker it brings to me.

Let us raise our daughters such as Mollie

Here is a high spirited diary account of a young woman who travels across the country with her parents and young siblings. Her wonderful sence of humor and adventure are entertaining and well accounted in her pranks and hijinks. This diary provides excellent commentary on life on the road, the importance of family, and falling in love during the mid-nineteenth century. A very easy read, but you'll want to note enteries on clothing, cooking, visiting, and daily living. How sad we are not able to learn how her life continues after her diary stops....Joy Melcher, Civil War Lady Magazine, Pipestone, MN