Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West

by Marcia Meredith Hensley

Book Overview

Instead of talking about women's rights, these frontier women grabbed the opportunity to become landowners by homesteading in the still wild west of the early 1900s. Here they tell their stories in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0931271908
• ISBN13: 9780931271908
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: High Plains Press
• Length: 303 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

The true stories of women who seized the opportunity to become landowners by homesteading in the ear

Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West tells the true stories of women who seized the opportunity to become landowners by homesteading in the (then still wild!) west during the early 1900s. The text smoothly summarizes the unique challenges and hardships these women faced, but the main draw to Staking Her Claim is its primary sources - letters and articles of the era in which these women tell their stories in their own words. Vintage black-and-white photographs pepper this enthralling hands-on account, highly recommended for high school, college, and public lending library collections. "Another reason homesteading by single women increased by the time of the Enlarged Homestead Acts of 1909 and 1912 is that by then the daughters of families who homesteaded in the late 1800s were coming of age. These young women had acquired skills needed to homestead while growing up on their parents' homesteads farther east and were no strangers to the hard work they were undertaking."

Women Homesteaders--Struggles with Adversity

Marcia Hensley mulled over this material, gathering and researching and thinking for a long time. Like many books, the germ of the idea began, no doubt, with a few instances which stimulated her curiosity. Were there more women who hearkened to the goading of Horace Greeley, "Go West, Young Man!"? How many? A significant number? Were they dreaming the same dreams? Were there women's stories untold and undisclosed in the development of the Mountain West, a milieu dominated with men's stories? Hensley shows us that indeed there were such stories. The Homestead Act of 1862 opened the door for men and single women--"heads of households" specifically--to acquire land by a few years of "proving up," and then eventually owning the land. Revisions to the act in 1909 and 1912 continued the westering prospects for those willing, and more women tried it then than earlier. Not as many women as men tried it, but there were some, and the book puts that together for us in a compilation of historic and literary examples. Homesteading wasn't easy, and many of both genders failed along the way. But some had the necessary grit, and they succeeded. These are their stories. Standing around and being dainty wasn't the way of the woman homesteader. Instead they coped, somehow, with the pestiferous--pack rats, mice, snakes (including lots of rattlers), prairie dogs, coyotes, porcupines, jackrabbits and more, dispatching some with their rifles, or traps, or something as uncomplicated as a shovel. Whack! Off with their heads! Some coped with intense cold of winter, and intense heat of summer, and other difficult weather conditions. They usually lived, for several months a year at least, in small spaces, sometimes dug out of the earth, rather than more common sorts of habitations. Some walked long distances for a bucket of precious water, to be carefully doled out for too many needs. Others walked miles just to visit a neighbor and break the monotony of the wide open spaces. They tried gardening and too often lost most of their crops to rabbits, prairie dogs, birds, and grasshoppers, or conditions that were far too arid for successful crop raising. A lucky few managed, with some hired support, to yield a good crop of oats, or wheat, or alfalfa on their acreage, while some might have not much but a good crop of rocks. Hensley gives us these stories by various means, first through early 1900s magazine articles. Then we get to read letters homesteaders sent to loved ones somewhere, which were saved. A few memoirs were uncovered, written some years later. Historical records yielded some stories of women homesteaders. A few homesteaders give oral histories of their experiences. Hensley puts all this together for us in a logical and readable fashion, integrating a varied fare into a meaningful whole, entertaining and intriguing. And a variety of photos are distributed throughout the book for our further interest and edification about the tex

Expanded Vision

Although I've always known that much of the American west was settled by homesteaders, I never gave much thought to who those homesteaders were. If I'd been pressed for my thoughts, the word "families" would have been in there, along with farmers, and maybe ranchers. So you can imagine my surprise at Marcia Meredith Hensley's disclosure in Staking Her Claim that 12 percent of all homesteaders were single women, and that these women were generally well-educated and self-reliant. Of the twenty-four women whose stories were included in this book, all but three had professional careers at some point in their lives. Their lives after proving up on their homesteads varied widely, but despite the rigors of their experiences, all seemed pleased with their decisions to homestead. Hensley did a masterful and scholarly job of researching and presenting these findings. Her documentation is meticulous, and the book will surely be used in college classrooms for decades to come, yet it is eminently readable. She begins the book with an overview of demographics and statistics, explaining who these single women were and why we haven't heard more about them. The main part of the book is devoted to case studies drawn from magazine articles, personal correspondence, memoirs, and historical accounts. Hensley devotes a chapter to each of these genres, including excerpts from source material, interspersed with her explanatory comments. As I read these accounts, my thoughts ran along two channels. First, I was inspired by the courage and persistence of these women who set forth against the norms of the day. Some had family help; others were entirely dependent on their own resources. All were challenged by the conditions of life on the raw edge of civilization. I also realized that the trails these single women withstood were faced by all homesteaders without regard to gender or marital status, and many of them may have been even more onerous for women bearing and raising small children. I found one story especially poignant. Ida Gwynn Garvin was a forty-eight year old widow with seven children and an active case of tuberculosis when she set out to homestead in Choteau County, Montana, not far from her brother's homestead. She reported on the rigors of the experience and her own health status in regular letters to her mother, who remained in Ohio. One of my great-grandmothers suffered with tuberculosis for the last sixteen years of her life, beginning the year Ida Garvin posted her claim. Although my great-grandparents were not homesteaders, they did move around the southwest like nomads, and life was surely no easier. Ida's story gives me deeper insight into the sketchy accounts of my grandmother's experience helping her sisters care for their mother as she grew up. My one regret about this book is unavoidable. Although the accounts of life on the frontier are marvelously detailed, they served mainly to whet my appetite for more. I can't fault the author for this

Grandma's World

If it's a cold snowy winter where you are (as it is here -- thirty below last night) and you're a single female out West (as I am) and you live alone because you love it (as I do), then I've got a book for you. It's "Staking her Claim: Women Homesteaders in the West," partly letters, partly memoir, and partly scholarly reflection, with a nice little sprinkling of photos, this book is produced by the High Plains Press with its special sympathy for women. Reading it, one realizes that this is not something that just happened on the American Frontier at a certain point in time, but a kind of attitude and resourcefulness that persists on the fringes of conformity everywhere. One has to grant that homesteading on the American prairie was a special case, a way for women to escape from housewife drudgery or other scut work disguised as a career in nursing or teaching. As well, some of these tales speak of second generation homesteaders, young women who had grown up on the family homestead. They knew quite well what they were getting into and what it would take to survive. Now the stories come to us as though new, unworn by familiarity: homesteaders with pianos who painted watercolors to pin on walls they had plastered themselves. Good reminders that bad times can be survived, land can be lost and gained, community can be built and rebuilt in the most unpromising places.

Enjoying "Staking Her Claim"

I read this book out loud to my husband on a road trip from Southern California to McCall Idaho. The scenery we saw flying past our car's windows matched many of the descriptions of the homesteaders' arid lands described in this book. We felt somewhat lonely as we headed down the empty portions of the 2 lane highways that sparingly cross Nevada from south to north and then into the south-eastern most lands of Oregon that are so sparsely populated. It was so easy to identify with these heroines and at the same time laugh at ourselves for looking upon our retirement "adventure" as if it took any courage at all when compared to theirs. These women were remarkable for their determination, courage, and independent ways. I was feeling so much a part of their lives and relishing the excitement of that period in American history. When we stopped to stretch our legs in Jordan Valley I looked for a hitching post to which we might tie our horses! There were none but the "time-shift" in my mind continued when I went into a small family run espresso, soft ice cream, marbles and memorabilia shop called "the rock house." I felt like I was still in the early part of the twentieth century!...The biographical details were intimate portraits of the lives of these amazing women. The author has obviously spent many hours combing newspapers and journals as well as having contact with several of the relatives of these great Americans who helped to push our nation west. Thank you very much Marcia Hensley for this entertaining and informative treasure.