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Enfranchise: To give the rights of citizenship to a person or group of people, especially to give that group the right to vote.

Suffrage: The right to vote or the act of voting.

Women’s suffrage represents the first stage in the demand for political equality – the right of women to vote in political elections. It was as early as the 1600s that individual women demanded the right to vote for themselves. An organized movement, led by women, first emerged in the United States in 1848.

The movement was also open to men, but for the most part, woman suffragists often were met with hostility and sometimes violence. In 1893, New Zealand, in fact, became the first country to grant women the right to vote in national elections. Most of the world’s women have been granted the right to vote only since the end of World War II and in some Persian Gulf nations as well as some Asian nations, women remain disenfranchised.

Woman suffrage claimed for women the right to govern themselves and choose their own representatives. It asserted that women should enjoy individual rights of self-government, rather than relying on indirect civic participation as the mothers, sisters, or daughters of male voters.

Women Against Men

Women’s enfranchisement took many decades to achieve because women had to persuade a male electorate to grant them the vote. Many men, and some women, believed that women were not suited by circumstance or temperament for the vote. Western political philosophers insisted that a voter had to be independent, unswayed by appeals from employers, landlords, or an educated elite. Women by nature were believed to be dependent on men and subordinate to them. Many thought women could not be trusted to exercise the independence of thought necessary for choosing political leaders responsibly. It was also believed that women’s place was in the home, caring for husband and children.

Entry of women into political life, it was feared, challenged the assignment of women to the home and might lead to disruption of the family. Priests and ministers believed that women should confine their influence to home and children. Politicians feared that women might vote them out of office. Socialist and labor parties feared that women might vote for conservative candidates. Specific interests, such as textile companies and the liquor, brewing, and mining industries, did not want to allow women voting rights, because they thought women might then vote for legislation that would damage their businesses.

Women in the U.S. & Canada

Women in the United States and Canada were enfranchised relatively early (1920 and 1918, respectively). Mexico, sharing with much of Latin America a Spanish and Roman Catholic heritage that discouraged enfranchisement of women, did not grant women the vote until much later.

The first woman in the North American colonies to demand the vote was Margaret Brent, the owner of extensive lands in Maryland. In 1647 Brent insisted on two votes in the colonial assembly, one for herself and one for Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, whose power of attorney she held. When the governor denied her request, Brent boycotted the assembly.

Women in New Jersey could vote initially because a loophole in the state’s constitution of 1790 gave the vote to “all inhabitants” who satisfied certain property and residence requirements. Property-holding women took advantage of the constitution’s vague wording. A state legislator who had almost been defeated by women voters helped to pass a bill to disenfranchise the state’s women and black men in 1807.

American women were the first in the world to voice organized demands for the vote. Abolitionist activists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, along with several other women friends, convened a meeting in Stanton’s hometown of Seneca Falls, N.Y., “to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.” At the convention, held on July 19–20, 1848, Stanton read her “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” and the convention debated and approved a series of resolutions designed to win equality for women. The most controversial, included at Stanton’s insistence, stated that “it is the duty of the women in this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the franchise.”

Civil War

During the Civil War, suffragists shelved their cause temporarily, hoping that at war’s end, women as well as emancipated slaves would be enfranchised. After the war Republican party politicians believed enfranchisement of the ex-slaves would be defeated if harnessed to the even more unpopular cause of woman’s suffrage. They succeeded in passing the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which gave the vote to black men but not to women.

Rival Factions

In the wake of the passage of these amendments, suffragists split into two rival factions. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, her longtime colleague, refused to support the 15th Amendment because it did not enfranchise women, favoring passage of another constitutional amendment to do so.

They formed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. Conservative feminists, led by Lucy Stone; her husband, Henry Blackwell; and Julia Ward Howe, supported the 15th Amendment and campaigned for the passage of state laws to enfranchise women. They established the American Woman’s Suffrage Association (AWSA) in 1869.

But the Supreme Court dashed any hope that the courts might enfranchise women without legislative or constitutional changes. In Minor v. Hapersett (1875) the Court ruled that citizenship did not in itself confer suffrage rights. The AWSA and NWSA eventually reconciled and in 1890 merged to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Anthony retired from the presidency of NAWSA in 1900. Carrie Chapman Catt, the astute political campaigner who succeeded her, organized both a well-coordinated state-by-state and a national effort. By 1910 women had the right to vote in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Washington.

Early 20th Century

The suffrage movement reawakened in the early 20th century. Educated middle-class women questioned the reasons for denying them the right to vote when immigrant men, many of whom were illiterate or poorly educated, could help choose the nation’s leaders. Social reformers hoped that a woman’s bloc vote might achieve causes they favored, such as laws protecting the health and safety of employed women and the abolition of child labor. Still, the suffrage movement faced considerable opposition.

Alice Paul brought the attention-getting tactics of British suffragists to U.S. shores. In 1916 Paul and other militant activists, inspired by the British woman’s movement, left the NAWSA to form the National Woman’s Party. To bring pressure on President Woodrow Wilson to back congressional passage of a constitutional amendment, they picketed the White House and chained themselves to the White House fence. Grateful to American women for their active participation during World War I (1917–1918), Congress passed a woman suffrage constitutional amendment by a narrow margin in 1919. It was ratified by the states in August 1920.

As the majority of the population, women are also the majority of the electorate. Nonetheless, women have not exercised their full potential to vote for issues of special concern to them. Initially after enfranchisement, voter turnout among women in most countries was lower than men’s. Female voter turnout matched that of men in the United States in the 1980s. Women voters in most countries also favored candidates of religious parties and of the political Right. Women are more likely than men to be religiously devout and swayed by clerical opinion. But in the United States, from the 1980s, women voters were more likely than men to prefer liberal candidates.

Women’s representation in political appointive and elected office may be visualized as a pyramid. The higher and more powerful the office, the fewer the women officeholders. Women are generally absent from influential appointive, elective, and civil service posts. There are several reasons for this. The claims of family and of balancing paid work and domestic responsibilities have limited the time women can devote to public life. Moreover, the cultural belief that women’s domain is the home has created prejudices against women candidates. Finally, women have had difficulty being nominated to high office and securing financing for political campaigns. However, with advances in women’s education and employment, and the impact of the women’s movement, political representation of women at all levels of government has been improving.

source: Elizabeth H. Pleck, Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College and edited From Grolier’s Encyclopedia Americana

(1867-1957

Born in Wisconsin, Laura Ingalls Wilder moved often with her family. While she was growing up, her family moved to many different rural communities and small towns in the Midwest and Plains states.

Her father claimed a homestead near De Smet, South Dakota, where she went to school. She worked as a seamstress and a teacher and married Almanzo Wilder in 1885.

They filed a claim for a homestead, but the new family experienced hard times including crop failure, fire, and illness. They moved several times, ending up in Mansfield, Missouri, where their daughter Rose grew up.

From 1919 to 1927 Laura Wilder worked for the Mansfield Farm Loan Association, meeting many farmers from surrounding areas. Interested in their stories, she began to write columns for farming magazines.

Her interest in writing about rural lifestyles led her to work with her daughter Rose Wilder Lane to write a series of books about her own life. Her first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was published in 1932. Each book in the series, now titled Little House on the Prairie, was written from the point of view of Laura as a young girl.

Many of the books won awards, and they became classic stories about life on the frontier. Later they became the source for a popular television show of the same name.

Feb. 17, 1853 – Feb. 27, 1930

Poker Alice’s real name was Alice Ivers.  She was born in 1853 in Devonshire, England and educated there before moving with her family to Colorado.   There, she met and married Frank Duffield, a mining engineer, who had taught her poker.    After  Frank was killed in a mining accident in Leadville, Colorado, she had to support herself, so she turned to gambling, card games in particular, because it was something she had discovered she was good at and lucky.   Poker Alice become a legend in Deadwood, South Dakota and she is still represented in Deadwood’s “Days of ’76” parade.   She died in Rapid City, SD on Feb. 27, 1930.

Background:
Soon after taking on life as a gambler, she expanded her range and operation and began traveling and gambling all over the West:  through New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and South Dakota. In New Mexico, she broke the bank at one of the saloons, and the dealer was forced to close the game. Alice took over and played all night and left with a tidy profit.

Alice soon moved to Deadwood, South Dakota, where she became something of a local legend.  She attracted a lot of men to the table  and her deadpan expression (poker face) gave her a distinct advantage. Alice’s winnings at the table often totaled as much as $6,000 in one night.

In Deadwood, she met her long-term husband, Warren G. Tubbs, while gambling.  The two were often adversaries at the gaming table but Tubbs never had much luck and Alice beat him regularly.  Tubbs, however,  supported his gambling habit through his paintings.  She became Tubbs’ caretaker during his last years, which were marred by tuberculosis acquired while painting.  After he passed away, Alice was unable to take his body out to bury until the blizzard was over. She had to hock her wedding ring to pay the burial expenses.

Alice then moved from Deadwood through Rapid City and on to Sturgis.  Once there, she engaged George Huckert, an admirer, in a brief marriage.  But he died soon after and for the third time Alice was widowed.  Once again broke and without a man, she went back to dealing cards.  In Sturgis, she ran a poker establishment and bootlegged alcohol to support herself until prohibition closed here down. Alice then catered to the soldiers stationed at Fort Meade by running a house of ill repute. A few other appointments as a dealer followed, such as one at the Diamond Jubilee in Omaha.

During the waning years of her life, Alice’s beauty faded and she took to wearing an old skirt, a man’s shirt and a worn hat. A lifetime of cigar smoking had taken its toll on her health. Though the thrill of the early days were gone, Poker Alice continued to play cards well into her sixties.  She lived into her seventies, dying in 1930.  She passed away on February 27 in a Rapid City hospital and is buried at St. Aloysius Cemetery in the Black Hills.

(November 25, 1846 – June 9, 1911)

Carry Nation is most famous for spearheading the Temperance movement (the battles against alcohol in pre-Prohibition America). She came from a troubled background: her mother was mentally ill and her husband was an alcoholic who drank himself to death. She remarried a lawyer named David Nation and soon after moving to Texas, she began having frequent visions.

Carry Nation then settled in Kansas and it was there that she organized the local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1899, she declared war on liquor and went about smashing up saloons and liquor selling stores with a hatchet. She was arrested repeatedly for her actions and others in the organization soon distanced themselves from her.

Background:
She was born Carrie Moore in Garrard County, Kentucky. The spelling of her first name is ambiguous; both “Carrie” and “Carry” are considered correct. Official records list the former, and Nation used that spelling most of her life; the latter was used by her father in the family Bible. Upon beginning her campaign against liquor in the early 20th century, she adopted the name Carry A. Nation mainly for its value as a slogan, and had it registered as a trademark in the state of Kansas.  Nation also operated under the alias Mary Pat Clarke.

She was in ill health much of the time; her family experienced several financial setbacks and moved several times, finally settling in Belton, Missouri, where she was buried in the town’s cemetery.  Many of Nation’s family members suffered from mental illness. Her mother went through periods where she had delusions and young Carrie was often tended to in the slave quarters as a result.

In 1865, Carry met Dr. Charles Gloyd, and they were married on November 21, 1867. Gloyd was an alcoholic and they separated shortly before the birth of their daughter, Charlien.  He died less than a year later, in 1869. Nation attributed her passion for fighting liquor to her failed first marriage to the heavy-drinking Gloyd.

Carry acquired a teaching certificate but was unable to make ends meet in this field. She then met Dr. David A. Nation, an attorney, minister and newspaper editor, nineteen years her senior. They were married on December 27, 1877. The family purchased a 1,700 acre cotton plantation on the San Bernard River in Brazoria County, Texas, but both knew little about farming and the venture was unsuccessful.  Dr. Nation became involved in the Jaybird-Woodpecker War and as a result was forced to move back north in 1889, this time to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where he found work preaching at a Christian church, and Carrie ran a successful hotel.

It was here that Carry began her temperance work. She started a local branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and campaigned for the enforcement of Kansas’ ban on the sales of liquor. Her methods escalated from simple protests to greeting bartenders with pointed remarks like “Good morning, destroyer of men’s souls,” to serenading saloon patrons with hymns on a hand organ.  Dissatisfied with the results of her efforts, she began to pray to God for direction. And on June 5, 1900, she felt she received her answer in the form of a heavenly vision that she interpreted to mean she should  take rocks – “smashers,” she called them – and proceeded to destroy 3 local saloons.  At one, Dobson’s Saloon, she proclaimed: “Men, I have come to save you from a drunkard’s fate”.  She then smashed the saloon’s stock with her cache of rocks. After similarly destroying two other saloons, a tornado hit eastern Kansas. This she took as divine approval of her actions.

Nation continued her destructive ways in Kansas, her fame spreading through her growing arrest record. After a raid in Wichita, her husband joked that she should use a hatchet next time for maximum damage. Nation replied, “That’s the most sensible thing you have said since I married you.”

Alone or accompanied by hymn-singing women, she would march into a bar and sing and pray, while smashing bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet. Between 1900 and 1910, she was arrested some 30 times for “hatchetations,” as she came to call them. Nation paid her jail fines from lecture-tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets.

Nation later published a biweekly newsletter called “The Smasher’s Mail”, a newspaper titled “The Hatchet”, and still later in life appeared in vaudeville.

Near her end, she moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where she founded the home known as Hatchet Hall. A spring just across the street from the house is named after her.

She collapsed during a speech in a Eureka Springs park and was taken to a hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas. She died there on June 9, 1911, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Belton City Cemetery in Belton, Missouri. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union later erected a stone inscribed “Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition, She Hath Done What She Could.”

(October 18, 1830 – August 12, 1885)

A novelist and a poet, Helen Jackson’s remarkable “A Century of Dishonor” stirred public outrage over the U.S. government’s mistreatment of Native Americans. Her book centered on seven tribes, among them: Cheyennes, Nez Perce, Sioux, Cherokees and detailed four massacres in particular. At her own expense, she sent a copy of the book to every member of Congress. She was born in Massachusetts in 1830 and became a lifelong friend of poet Emily Dickinson.

After her first husband’s death (and that of her two young sons), Jackson moved to Colorado Springs where she married William Sharpless Jackson. It was on a visit to Boston that she learned of the unjust treatment of Indians during a lecture and spent countless years crusading for public awareness. She founded the Boston Indian Citizenship Association. Her crusade lasted until her death in 1885 when even from her deathbed she wrote President Grover Cleveland a letter urging the Indian cause.

Background:
She was born Helen Maria Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts.  She had two brothers, both of whom died shortly after birth, and a sister named Anne. Her father was a minister, author, and professor of Latin, Greek, and philosophy at Amherst College.  Her mother died in 1844, and her father died three years later, leaving her in the care of an aunt.

She had a good education, having attended Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school in New York City. She was a classmate of the poet Emily Dickinson, also from Amherst. The two carried on a correspondence for all of their lives, but few of their letters have survived.

In 1852, Helen Fiske married United States Army Captain Edward Bissell Hunt, who died in a military accident in 1863. Her son Murray Hunt died in 1854 of a brain disease and her other son, Rennie Hunt, died of diphtheria in 1865.  Helen began traveling and writing after these deaths.

In the winter of 1873-1874 she was in Colorado Springs, Colorado in search of a cure for tuberculosis. There she met William Sharpless Jackson, a wealthy banker and railroad executive. They married in 1875, together just ten years before she died of cancer in 1885.

Scholars know her as Helen Hunt Jackson, but she never used that name herself—she only used one married name at a time: Helen Hunt or Helen Jackson.

In 1879, her interests turned to the plight of the Native Americans after attending a lecture in Boston by Ponca Chief Standing Bear, who described the forcible removal of the Ponca Indians from their Nebraska reservation. Jackson was angered by what she heard regarding the unfair treatment at the hands of government agents and became an activist. She started investigating and publicizing the wrongdoing, circulating petitions, raising money, and writing letters to The New York Times on behalf of the Poncas.

She also started writing a book condemning the Indian policy of the government and the history of broken treaties.  Her book, “A Century of Dishonor”, called for drastic changes to be made; it was published in 1881.  Jackson then sent a copy to every member of Congress with an admonishment printed in red on the cover, “Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations.” But, to her disappointment, the book had little impact.

She then went to southern California to take a much needed rest. She had become interested in the area’s missions and the Mission Indians on an earlier visit, and now she began an in-depth study. While in Los Angeles, California, she met Don Antonio Coronel, a former mayor and city councilman who had also served as State Treasurer. He was a well-known authority on early life in the area and was also a former inspector of missions for the Mexican government. Don Antonio described to Jackson the plight of the Mission Indians after 1833, when secularization policies led to the sale of mission lands and the dispersal of their residents.

Many of the original Mexican land grants had clauses protecting the Indians on the lands they occupied. But when Americans assumed control of the southwest after the Mexican-American War, they ignored Indian claims to these lands, which led to mass dispossessions. In 1852, there were an estimated fifteen thousand Mission Indians in Southern California. But, because of the adverse impact of dispossessions by Americans, by the time of Jackson’s visit they numbered less than four thousand.

The stories told by Don Antonio spurred Jackson into action. Her efforts soon came to the attention of the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Hiram Price, who recommended she be appointed an Interior Department agent. Jackson’s assignment was to visit the Mission Indians and ascertain the location and condition of various bands, and determine what lands, if any, should be purchased for their use. With the help of Indian agent Abbot Kinney, Jackson criss-crossed Southern California and documented the appalling conditions she saw. At one point, she hired a law firm to protect the rights of a family of Soboba Indians facing dispossession of their land at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains.

During this time, Jackson read an account in a Los Angeles newspaper about a Cahuilla Indian who had been shot and killed. His wife, it turned out, was named Ramona.

In 1883, she completed her fifty-six page report, which called for a massive government relief efforts, and while a bill embodying her recommendations passed the U.S. Senate, it died in the House of Representatives.

Not discouraged, Jackson decided to write a novel that would depict the Indian experience “in a way to move people’s hearts.” An inspiration for the undertaking, Jackson admitted, was Uncle Tom’s Cabin written years earlier by her friend, Harriet Beecher Stowe.  “If I can do one-hundredth part for the Indian that Mrs. Stowe did for the Negro, I will be thankful,” she told a friend.

Jackson was particularly drawn to the fate of her Indian friends in the Temecula area of Riverside County, California and used the story of what happened to them in her novel which was begun in December 1883, with an original title of In “The Name of the Law”.  The manuscript was completed in slightly over three months and it became her classic novel, “Ramona”, about a part-Indian orphan raised in Spanish California society and her Indian husband, Alessandro.  Published in November 1884, it achieved almost instant success.

Jackson then intended to write a children’s story on the Indian issue but her health  was deteriorating rapidly and she died of cancer in San Francisco, California in August 1885.

Her last letter was written to President Grover Cleveland, urging him to read her early work “A Century of Dishonor”. Speaking to a friend, Jackson said, “My Century of Dishonor” and “Ramona” are the only things I have done of which I am glad. They will live and bear fruit.”

Each year, the city of Hemet stages “The Ramona Pageant”, an outdoor play based on Jackson’s novel “Ramona”.

Abigail Scott Duniway was a crusader for Women’s Suffrage. Born in Illinois, Duniway traveled to Oregon with her family in 1852. She described the arduous journey in her first book “Captain Gray’s Company or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon”. She was nearly completely self-taught and read newspapers avidly. She became influenced by the women’s rights movement by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. While in Oregon, Duniway became a schoolteacher.

She established her own newspaper in 1870 called New Northwest. When the national Women’s Suffrage Association convened in Washington D.C. in 1886, Duniway was recognized as the leading women’s advocate in the West. She worked for years to achieve women’s property rights and it wasn’t until 1912 that Oregon granted women the right to vote.

At 78, she became the first registered women voter in her county. Her autobiography is called “Path Breaking” (1914). Sadly, she died five years before an amendment to the constitution was signed granting women voting rights

(July 2, 1861-July 20, 1889)

Ellen Liddy Watson was a female pioneer of Wyoming who became better known as Cattle Kate, an outlaw of the Old West, although she wasn’t violent and was never charged with any crime. She was ultimately lynched by agents of powerful cattle ranchers whose interests she had threatened, and her life has become the subject of Old West legend.

Background:
She was born in Arran Lake, Bruce County, in Ontario, Canada. Her father was Thomas Lewis Watson, and her mother was Francis Close Watson. She was called Ella in her youth, and was the eldest of ten children born to the Watson family, the later four of which were born in Kansas after the family moved there in 1877.

The family settled near Lebanon, Kansas, and began to homestead. At the age of 16 Ella was courted by a local farmer named William A. Pickell, who was three years older than she. The two were married on November 4, 1879. However, Pickell was abusive, both verbally and physically, and drank heavily. He often would beat her with a horse whip. In January, 1883, she fled to her parents home. Pickell came after her, but was intimidated by her father, and fled, having no contact with her afterwards. She filed for divorce, and moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska, fourteen miles north of her family’s homestead.

That same year she moved, against her family’s wishes, to Denver, Colorado. One of her brothers lived there, and she stayed with him for a time, then moving on to Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was unusual during that period in American history for a woman to move independently and alone. However, she did so, finding work as both a seamstress and a cook.

She later moved on to Rawlins, Wyoming. While in Rawlins she began working as cook and waitress in the premier boarding-house/hostelry in town, the “Rawlins House.”   It is sometimes alleged that the “Rawlins House” was a brothel and Ella worked as a prostitute there, but it was not a brothel, and there is no evidence Ella ever worked as a prostitute anywhere. The idea that Ella was a prostitute was circulated by the influential cattle barons in order to discredit her.

On February 24, 1886, she met a homesteader named James Averell, who was in town on business. The two began a romance, and she moved with him to his homestead near the Sweetwater River country.

He had previously married Sophia Jaeger after his second service in the army was up. The two had a child together, but both Sophia and the infant died from fever in August, 1882. Devastated, Averell began homesteading fifteen miles north of the homestead he had worked while married to Sophia. He began to frequent the “Rawlins House”, where he became acquainted with Ella, who then moved to his home.

Jim had built and opened a “road ranch” (a restaurant- general store) on his homestead property, serving both cowboys and settlers who were enroute to Oregon and other locations west. Ella served as the cook, and was allowed to keep the money she made, fifty cents a meal. In March, 1886, Ella’s divorce became final. Ella and Averell did apply for a marriage license in Lander, Wyoming that same year, but it is unclear if the two ever legally married, as the license was never filed. On June 26, 1886, Averell was appointed Postmaster of the community. Ella, however, expressed her desire to have her own ranch, working independently from his.

She filed on a homestead adjacent to Averell’s in August, 1886, and built a small two room cabin. At the time, the Maverick Law stated that unbranded calves found on a property were to be branded with an “M”, and became the property of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, a powerful group of cattlemen at the time. The cattlemen association limited small ranchers from bidding on cattle at auctions, and insisted all ranchers, small and large, have a registered brand. Although this seems reasonable at first glance, the cost for registering a brand was set quite high, to insure that few smaller ranchers could afford it. Also, a brand had to be accepted, and the cattlemen’s association had substantial power inside the committee that either rejected or accepted brands. Essentially, this locked out many smaller ranchers from operating within the scope of the law of the time.

The wealthy cattlemen began to build portable cabins on land, claiming it as a homestead, thus making the land theirs, and after registering it with the county, they would simply move the portable cabins to another location and repeat the same process over again. Averell, being the local Justice of the Peace, began writing about these acts to a newspaper in Casper, Wyoming. This infuriated the cattlemen.

On March 23, 1888, Ella filed her claim for her homestead, where she had built her cabin two years before. By law, this made the property hers. Between her claim and Averell’s, the two owned 320 acres. She fenced much of the property, built a livery stable and a several corrals. In 1888, under extreme pressure from small ranchers and homesteaders, the Governor repealed the Maverick Law, bringing on heavy opposition from the wealthy cattlemen. By now, Ella had been dubbed by local newspapers as “Cattle Kate”.

In the Fall of that year, Ella purchased twenty eight cattle from a man who was driving them from Nebraska to Salt Lake City, Utah. On December 3, 1888, Ella applied for the “WT” brand, but was rejected. On March 16, 1889, likely feeling her own brand would never be accepted, she bought a brand already registered, thus now having a legal operating brand.

That same year she adopted an 11 year old boy named Gene Crowder, whose father had worked for her previously, but who was a heavy drinker and unable to properly care for his son. Together with another young boy, 14 year old John DeCorey, they worked her steadily increasing ranch. By the middle of July, 1889, she had forty one head of cattle, and hired another man named Frank Buchanan to mend fences. Albert John Bothwell, a wealthy cattleman and member of the cattlemen’s association, lived only about a mile from the ranch. Although he had never owned the area of land on which Ella’s ranch was now located, he had used it from time to time in years past. He now greatly resented the presence of her ranch.

Averell had granted Bothwell right-of-way so that Bothwell could irrigate his property. Bothwell began to fence in parts of Ella’s ranch, and sent cowboys working for him to harass the couple. On July 20, 1889, a range detective, George Henderson, who was working for Bothwell, accused Ella of rustling cattle from Bothwell and branding them with her own brand. The cattlemen sent riders to arrest Ella. They forced her into a wagon while young Gene Crowder watched, telling her they were going to Rawlins.

Crowder rode to tell Averell and Buchanan what had happened, finding Buchanan first, and Buchanan rode after the wagon. By the time Buchanan arrived, the group of riders were lynching both Ella and Averell. Buchanan rode in and opened fire on the riders, and a shoot-out followed. At least one of the vigilante riders was wounded, but Buchanan was forced to withdraw, as there were around ten men facing him. He then rode to the ranch, where he was met by employee Ralph Coe and the two teenage boys. By that time, both Averell and Ella were dead.

County Sheriff Frank Hadsell and Deputy Sheriff Phil Watson (no relation to Ella) arrested six men for the hangings. A trial date was set, but prior to the date several witnesses were intimidated, threatened, and several people were killed mysteriously. One of those who disappeared was the boy, Gene Crowder. He was never seen again. Buchanan fled after another shoot-out with unknown suspects, and was seen periodically over the next two to three years, eventually changing his name and disappearing all together. Ralph Coe, who was a nephew to Averell, died the very day of the trial, from poison.

Another witness, Dan Fitger, had observed the lynchings, and had seen the riders arrive at the location with Buchanan riding far behind. He also witnessed the shoot-out between Buchanan and the riders, stating that at least one of the vigilante riders was wounded, possibly two. However, he did not come forward until years after the incident, for fear of the cattlemen. At the time of the trial, it was unknown that Gitger had witnessed this. He stated he had been plowing in a field when the incident happened.

In the end, Averell and Ella’s possessions were sold off in auction, and their property eventually became the property of members of the cattlemen’s association. This was one of many events that eventually sparked the Johnson County War, and numerous killings similar to that of Watson and Averell, to include the murder of Nate Champion.

(1869-1958)

Mary Jane Colter was a master architect and interior designer whose many works graced Arizona’s Grand Canyon.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Colter moved often as a child. She lived in Texas, Colorado, and Minnesota and went to school in California.

After graduating from the California School of Design in San Francisco, Colter helped support her mother and sister by teaching art at the Mechanic Arts High School in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Thinking she might like to work as an architect, an unusual career for a woman at that time, she applied for a job with the Fred Harvey Company. The Harvey Company led tours through the Southwest, introducing Americans to cities like Santa Fe and to natural sites such as the Grand Canyon.

Colter’s 40-year career with the Fred Harvey Company began in 1902 when she was hired to decorate the Alvarado Hotel and Indian Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Colter went on to design many more hotels, restaurants, gift shops, and viewing places. She used her buildings to introduce tourists to the arts and cultures of the Native American Southwest.

One of her first projects was Hopi House, a hotel at the Grand Canyon, where she based her design on a pueblo structure.

She tried to make her building authentic by hiring Hopi Indians and learning about Hopi culture.

Many of her buildings, including the Lookout and the Watchtower at the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert Inn in the Petrified Forest, are still standing today.

Willa Cather was a Pulitzer prize winning novelist and short story writer. Her work centered on pioneer life in the Nebraska prairies and southwestern deserts.

As a child, Willa Cather moved with her family from Virginia to Nebraska, first to a farm and then to the small town of Red Cloud. She went to college at the University of Nebraska to become a scientist but instead decided to become a writer.

After graduation (1895), she moved to Pennsylvania where she taught English and Latin at a high school while writing short stories on the side. In 1906, she moved to New York and began to write articles and stories for a living. She worked as an editor at McClure’s magazine and became a professional writer.

Though she grew up in a time when it was sometimes hard for women to become successful writers, Willa Cather became one of America’s best novelists. Her most famous books, including O Pioneers (1913) and My Antonia, explored themes of farming, family life, and community in her home state of Nebraska. She wrote about immigrants and pioneers, especially about the strong bond between farmers and their land. Other works by Ms. Cather include: Death Comes for the Archbishop and A Lost Lady.

Cather wrote twelve novels and many short stories. She won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1922 for One of Ours, a book about a farm boy who left Nebraska to fight in World War I. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 1938.

(May 1, 1853–August 1, 1903)

She was born Martha Jane Canary; there are numerous tales of how she got her nickname but no one knows for sure. She was a tough cookie and dressed like a man, in buckskins. By the time she was 18, after moving to Salt Lake City with her parents after the Civil War, Jane had been a nurse, a dishwasher, a waitress, a cook and an ox-team driver.  She was a frontierswoman and professional scout most well-known for being a close friend of Wild Bill Hickok’s, but also having gained fame fighting American Indians.

She had a reputation for being able to handle a man, shoot like a cowboy, skills that took her into Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show where she performed sharpshooting astride her horse. The love of her life was Wild Bill Hickok. They allegedly were secretly married in 1870  and he supposedly took off after the birth of their daughter three years later.  During the 1870’s, Jane was the subject of some dime novels which brought her national fame. She is buried in Deadwood near Wild Bill Hickok.

Background:
She was born in Princeton, Missouri, the eldest of six children, having two brothers and three sisters. Her mother died in 1866 of “washtub pneumonia”, and her father died in 1867 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She lived for a time in Virginia City, Montana.  She received little, if any, formal education but was literate. In 1868 at age 16, she took on the role as head of her household and moved her family to Fort Bridger then onto Piedmont, Wyoming.   Accounts from this period described Canary as being attractive, with light blue eyes.

She moved on to an outdoors and rougher more adventurous life on the Great Plains.  In 1870, she signed on as a scout and adopted the uniform of a soldier. It is unclear whether she was actually enlisted in the United States Army at the time. From then on she mostly lost touch with her siblings.   She did live a very colorful and eventful life from that point on, but historians revealed that she was prone to exaggerations and lies about her exploits.

Indian Scout
Calamity Jane often claimed associations or friendships with famous figures of the Old West, almost always posthumously. Years after the death of General George Armstrong Custer, she claimed that she served under him during her initial enlistment at Fort Russell, and that she also served under him during the Indian Campaigns in Arizona. However, no records exist to show that Custer was assigned to Fort Russell, nor did he take an active part in the Arizona Indian Campaigns; he was instead subjugating the Plains Indians. It is more likely that she served under General George Crook at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming.

She did serve in one campaign in which General Custer (and 3 other generals) was involved, following the spring of 1872 near present day Sheridan, Wyoming.  It was the “Muscle Shell Indian Outbreak”,  also referred to as the “Nursey Pursey Indian Outbreak”. This is the only confirmed opportunity Calamity had to meet Custer.  Following that campaign, in 1874, her detachment was ordered to Fort Custer, where they remained until the following spring. During this campaign (and others involving Custer and Crook together), she was not attached to Custer’s command.  She was involved in several other campaigns in the long-running military conflicts with American Indians.

One story, told by her, has her acquiring the nickname “Calamity Jane” in 1872 by rescuing her superior, Captain Egan, from an ambush near Sheridan, Wyoming, in an area known then as Goose Creek, Wyoming. However, even back then not everyone accepted her version, and in another story it is said that she acquired it as a result of her warnings to men that to offend her was to “court calamity”.

One verified story about her is that in 1875 her detachment was ordered to the Big Horn River, under General Crook. Bearing important dispatches, she swam the Platte River and traveled 90 miles (145 km) at top speed while wet and cold to deliver them. Afterwards, she became ill. After recuperating for a few weeks, she rode to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and later, in July 1876, she joined a wagon train headed north, which is where she first met Bill Hickok, contrary to her later claims.

Deadwood and Wild Bill Hickok
In 1876, Calamity Jane settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills. She worked, on occasion, as a prostitute for Madam Dora DuFran, and later worked as a cook and in the laundry, also for DuFran.   She became friendly with Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter, having travelled with them to Deadwood in Utter’s wagon train. Jane greatly admired Hickok and she was obsessed with his personality and life.

After Hickok was killed during a poker game on August 2, 1876, Calamity claimed to have been married to Hickok and that Hickok was the father of her child (Jane), who she said was born September 25, 1873, and who she later put up for adoption by Jim O’Neil and his wife. There are no records to prove the birth of a child and the romantic slant to the relationship may have been a fabrication. During the period that the alleged child was born, she was working as a scout for the Army. At the time of his death, Hickok was newly married to Agnes Lake Thatcher, formerly of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

On September 6, 1941, the U.S. Department of Public Welfare did grant old age assistance to a Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick (name of her 3rd husband), who claimed to be the legal offspring of Martha Jane Canary and James Butler Hickok, after being presented with evidence that Calamity Jane and Wild Bill had married at Benson’s Landing, Montana Territory, on September 25, 1873, documentation being written in a Bible and presumably signed by two reverends and numerous witnesses.

Jane also claimed that following Hickok’s death, she went after Jack McCall, his murderer, with a meat cleaver, having left her guns at her residence in the excitement of the moment. However, she never confronted McCall. Following McCall’s eventual hanging for the offense, Jane continued living in the Deadwood area for some time, and at one point she did help save several passengers of an overland stagecoach by diverting several Plains Indians who were in pursuit of the stage. The stagecoach driver, John Slaughter, was killed during the pursuit, and Jane took over the reins and drove the stage on to its destination at Deadwood.  Also in late 1876, Jane nursed the victims of a smallpox epidemic in the Deadwood area.

Wild West Show
In 1884, Jane moved to El Paso, Texas, where she met Clinton Burke. They married in August 1885 and had a daughter in 1887. The marriage, however, did not last, and by 1895 they were officially separated.

In 1896, Calamity Jane began touring with Wild West shows, which she continued to do for the rest of her life. Throughout this period, she claimed to have been one of Hickok’s closest friends, a story that over time became the version history most often remembered as fact.

Jane died from complications of pneumonia in 1903. In accordance with what was said to be her dying wish, she was buried next to Wild Bill Hickok in Mount Moriah Cemetery, overlooking the city of Deadwood. There, her “Letters to my daughter” stayed in a museum until its closure in 1951, after the death of her daughter, and then were kept by a lady until their recent discovery by a Frenchman (Gregory Monro) interested in History, who had them reprinted.

1850 – 1940

She was born Mary Catherine Elder Haroney in Hungary on November 7, 1850 and was reported to have been the wife of Doc Holiday, however there are no records of the marriage. She traveled with Holiday to Texas, Dodge City, New Mexico and finally to Tombstone, Arizona.  She was a dance hall girl and prostitute for a number of years.

In 1880, Kate moved to Globe, Arizona when Holiday stayed on in  Tombstone with the Earps. She was visiting with him during the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral then married another whom she later left.

Background:
Kate was from an prominent family and her father was a doctor.  In 1862 Mexico’s Emperor Maximillian appointed Kate’s father to be his personal surgeon, and so the family left Hungary  for Mexico.  Three years later, when Maximillian’s rule dissolved, the Haroney family fled the country and moved to Davenport Iowa.   That  same year, in 1865, Kate lost both her parents (causes unknown) so she and her siblings were sent to foster homes.

Two years after that, Kate ran away by stowing aboard a steam ship enroute to St. Louis. The Captain named Fisher took pity on the girl and let her stay aboard as the ship made its way to St. Louis.  It was there that Kate took the Fisher name and enrolled in a convent school.  She later married a dentist and the pairing produced one child but both passed away the same year.

Meeting Earp & Holliday
In 1874, while working in a Wichita, Kansas sporting house for James Earp’s wife, Nellie, it’s believed that Kate developed a relationship with Wyatt Earp. She was then going by the name of Kate Elder (in 1875) and was listed as being in Dodge City, Kansas working as a dance hall girl.  A few years later she moved to Fort Griffin, Texas, where she met  Doc Holliday at a saloon where he was dealing cards.  While serving as a dance hall girl and prostitute, Kate earned the nickname “Big Nose” Kate for her prominent nose.
She traveled with Holiday to various parts of the country, including Kansas, Colorado, South Dakota and New Mexico, often still working as a prostitute.  While still in Fort Griffin, Texas, Kate came to Holliday’s rescue when he was incarcerated over a card game fight.  She helped him escape and the two fled to Dodge City, Kansas.

They fought often during their years together and soon after this incident, Holliday went off to Colorado, and left Kate in Dodge City.  Trouble followed Holliday wherever he went, though.  After a gunfight that left another man dead, Holliday went back to Dodge City but discovered that Kate was now gone.  

Reaching Tombstone, Arizona
When he discovered that his friend Wyatt Earp had gone to Tombstone, Arizona, because of a silver strike, Holliday headed there too.  He ran into Kate in Prescott, Arizona where the two enjoyed each other’s company once again, particularly since Holliday was flush with card game winnings.  Then in 1980, the two reached Tombstone, Arizona.  After that Kate ran a boarding house in Globe, Arizona, about 175 miles away from Tombstone. She often stayed with Holliday when she visited.

On March 15, 1881 a stage coach was robbed and Holliday was the prime suspect.  Kate and Holliday had just had one of their many fights and the Tombstone Cowboys who took after Holliday, got Kate drunk to persuade her to testify to the fact that she knew Holliday was involved. Holliday was arrested on her testimony but the next day she sobered up and recanted which resulted in the charges being thrown out.  This would more or less end the relationship with Holliday.  In October of that same year, the famous Gunfight at O.K. Corral took place.

From 1882 until the time of his death in 1887, Doc Holliday was in Colorado, and so was Kate, at least part of the time, as her brother owned property there. Some reports have it that Holliday may have spent time with Kate as her brother’s home was very near to the Sulfur Springs that Holliday visited to try to help his tuberculosis. Kate stayed in Colorado until after Holliday’s death.  Then, in 1888, she married a blacksmith and the two moved to Bisbee, Arizona, only a few miles from Tombstone. They also lived in Pearce, Arizona.

In 1889, Kate left her husband and moved to the small railroad town of Cochise, Arizona where she was hired to work at the Cochise Hotel which she did for about a year.  She then moved in with a man named Howard who she lived with until his death in 1930.  A year later, Kate  wrote to the Governor of Arizona, requesting admission to the “Arizona Pioneers Home.”  She wasn’t eligible because she was foreign born so she lied and said she had been born in Davenport, Iowa.  As a result, she was accepted to the home. Kate stayed there until her death on November 2, 1940.

1848 – 1889

From her association with outlaws such as Jesse James and the Younger brothers, Belle Starr reached a level of notoriety that today leaves the facts of her life not always distinguishable from the fiction.

Myra Belle Shirley was born Feb. 5, 1848 in Carthage, Missouri. Her Father John Shirley was a wealthy Carthage innkeeper, while mother Elizabeth “Eliza” Hatfield Shirley was descended from the Hatfield part of the infamous Hatfield and McCoy family feud in the West Virginia-Kentucky region.

Belle moved with her family to Sycene, Texas shortly before Carthage was burned to the ground by Confederate guerillas during the Civil War in 1864. That same year her older brother John “Bud” Shirley, who fought for the Confederacy with William C. Quantrill’s guerillas, was killed by Union troops in Sarcoxie, Mo.

She attended the Carthage Female Academy, where she excelled in reading, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, deportment, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and music-learning to play the piano.

As a teenager during the Civil War, Belle Shirley reported the positions of Union troops to Confederacy. One of her childhood friends in Missouri was Cole Younger, who served in Quantrill’s guerillas with Jesse and Frank James. After the war these men (and later Cole’s three brothers, among others) turned to outlawry, primarily that of robbery of banks, trains, stagecoaches, and people. In their flights from lawmen they would sometimes hide out at the Shirley farm, through which Belle became very tight with the James and Younger gangs. Their influence would be part of the reason Belle would turn to crime herself.

In 1866, Belle married James C. “Jim” Reed, a former guerilla whom she had known since her childhood in Carthage. Their daughter Rosie Lee “Pearl” (who was later rumored to be Cole Younger’s child) was born in 1868 and their son James Edwin “Ed” was born in 1871. While Jim initially tried his hand at farming, he would grow restless and fell in with the bad company of the Starr clan, a Cherokee Indian family notorious for whiskey, cattle, and horse thievery in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), as well as his wife’s old friends the James and Younger gangs.

Then in 1869, Jim shot in cold blood the man who supposedly accidentally shot his brother in a quarrel. He was wanted by the law, so he fled to California with Belle and Pearl in tow. Here two years later Jim again ran afoul of the law for passing counterfeit money and with Belle, Pearl and newborn son Ed, fled to Texas.

In November 1873, Jim Reed with two other men robbed Watt Grayson, a wealthy Creek Indian farmer in the Indian Territory, of $30,000 in gold coins. Belle was named as an accomplice, however, there was very little proof of her involvement. Nonetheless, they both went into hiding from the law in Texas: Jim in the town of Paris and Belle and the children with her family in Sycene. Allegedly, she took Pearl and Ed and went to Dallas, where she lived off the gold from the Grayson robbery.

She wore buckskins and moccasins or tight black jackets, black velvet skirts, high-topped boots, a man’s Stetson hat with an ostrich plume, and twin holstered pistols. She spent much her time in saloons, drinking and gambling at dice, cards, and roulette. At times she would ride her horse through the streets shooting off her pistols. This wild behavior was among what gave rise to her rather exaggerated image as a pistol-wielding outlaw.

In April 1874, Jim held up the Austin-San Antonio stagecoach and robbed the passengers of about $2,500. A price of $7,000 was placed on his head and he went into hiding. The law caught up with him near Paris, Texas on Aug. 6, 1874, when Jim Reed was shot to death while trying to escape from the custody of a deputy sheriff.

The young widow of an outlaw, Belle left Texas, put her children in the care of relatives, and took up with the Starr clan in the Indian Territory west of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Here Belle immersed herself in outlawry: organizing, planning and fencing for the rustlers, horse thieves and bootleggers, as well as harboring them from the law. Belle’s illegal enterprises proved lucrative enough for her to employ bribery to free her cohorts from the law whenever they were caught. When she was unable to buy off the lawmen, she was known to seduce them into looking the other way. All of these activities confirmed Belle’s status as an outlaw. During this period she married Samuel Starr, a member of the infamous Starr clan, in 1880.

Judge Isaac C. Parker, a.k.a., “The Hanging Judge,” of Fort Smith became obsessed with bringing Belle Starr to justice, but she eluded him at every turn. Then in 1882, charges of horse theft were brought against Belle and Sam by one of their neighbors in the Indian Territory. The jury returned a guilty verdict for each and in March 1883, Judge Parker sentenced Belle and Sam to a year in the House of Correction in Detroit, Michigan. During her prison term Belle proved to be a model prisoner and won the respect of the prison matron, whereas Sam was more incorrigible and was assigned to hard labor. Nevertheless, they were both released after nine months and returned to the Indian Territory. In fact Belle proved not to have been reformed at all by prison for she, as well as Sam, almost immediately returned to their villainous ways. Belle’s unrepentant attitude was best expressed in a comment to a Dallas newspaper reporter: “I am a friend to any brave and gallant outlaw.”

Over the next several years Belle Starr would continue to find herself arrested for charges of robbery, however, Judge Parker would be forced to release her for lack of evidence. A particularly memorable such arrest was in 1886, when Belle was charged with robbing a post office while dressed as a man. That same year Sam Starr was killed by a longtime family nemesis.

Shortly afterward Belle provided the legal counsel for Bluford “Blue” Duck, a Cherokee Indian indicted for murdering a farm hand. To Judge Parker’s ire, the death sentence he imposed was commuted to life imprisonment. And in 1888, when her son Ed was arrested for horse theft, her lawyers contacted President Grover Cleveland, who overturned Judge Parker’s seven-year prison sentence with a full pardon.

The notoriously unlawful life of Belle Starr came to a violent end on Feb. 3, 1889, two days short of her forty-first birthday. While riding from the general store to her ranch near Eufaula, Oklahoma, Belle was killed by a shotgun blast to the back. Suspects included Edgar Watson, with whom Belle had been feuding over the land he was renting from her (Watson was a fugitive and Belle had been told by the authorities that she would lose all of her land if caught harboring fugitives and for once she was obeying), her lover a Cherokee named Jim July with whom she had recently had a quarrel, and her son Ed, with whom she had had a strained relationship. However, the identity of the murderer of Belle Starr was never identified. Belle Starr was buried on her ranch with a marble headstone on which was engraved a bell, her horse, a star and the epitaph written by her daughter Pearl which reads:

“Shed not for her the bitter tear,
Nor give the heart to vain regret;
‘Tis but the casket that lies here,
The gem that filled it sparkles yet.”

Even in her lifetime Belle Starr had become a legend through the yellow journalism of her day. This status would be reinforced through the years by-in addition to the press-dime novel literature and the Hollywood motion picture industry. The result is that today historians continue attempting to decipher the facts of Belle Starr’s life from the fiction. (information courtesy of: Lakewood (Ohio) Public Library.)

Annie Oakley’s real name was Phoebe Moses and she was born in Darke County, Ohio in 1860. She helped her family survive by hunting and selling game, or wild animals.

Though she learned to use a rifle for practical reasons, she eventually became a skilled sharpshooter (a person skillful in hitting a target). She met her husband, Frank Butler, in a shooting contest in Ohio, and legend has it that she won the match with 25 out of 25 shots, to his 24.

Together, Frank Butler and Annie Oakley created a show and began to travel around the country giving shooting demonstrations, even joining the circus as “champion rifle shots.”

The husband-and-wife team joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in 1885 and toured with the show for sixteen years. This celebration of the “Old West” included skits of stage robberies, gunfights, and military exhibitions.

Though most heroes of the “Wild West” were men, Buffalo Bill’s show celebrated Annie Oakley’s skills, and she became one of the most famous women of the West.

Her nickname, “Little Sure Shot”, was given to her by Chief Sitting Bull who was so amazed by her skills.

Once, at the invitation of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, she knocked the ashes off a cigarette he was holding in his mouth.

She was severely injured in 1901 when the train that carried the Wild West show collided with another and she became partially paralyzed. She performed again but not as the same Annie. She died in 1926, a few years after an auto accident from which she never regained her health.