wild women

Among the top stories that made the front page of the June 21, 1873, edition of the Denton Journal in Denton, Maryland, were two articles about the Matrimonial News publication. The unique periodical was so widely read some editors felt it necessary to report on its popularity. Under the headline “Marriage by Advertisement,” journalists noted...

The crew and passengers aboard the steamship the City of Columbia stood huddled together on the flooded deck of the vessel. Night was all around them and an awful moment of peril and suspense hung in the wet air. A perfect storm had overtaken the steamer and raging winds had driven her into a mass...

The steamship Continental pitched and rolled as it traveled over the rough waters of the Pacific Ocean en route to the northwest section of the United States. The two dozen women on board were violently ill with sea sickness and desperate for the waves to subside. They were either lying on their bunks in their...

Tom King followed five spirited, fast-moving horses into a dense line of trees seven miles outside the town of Fredonia, Kansas. It was a stifling-hot August day in 1894. Low-hanging branches on brown, thirsty trees slapped at the criminal and his horse as they sped by. Sweat foamed around the animal’s neck and hindquarters. Tom,...

Thirty-two-year-old Enid Justin drove her Model T Ford into the small town of Jacksboro, Texas, in early 1926, determined to sell her quality, handmade cowboy boots to the mercantile owners there. As the head of the newly formed Nocona Boot Company, the tenacious woman knew what needed to be done to make her brand a...

A fierce wind filled with alkali dust blew past Silas Toles, a Labette County, Kansas farmer, as he made his way to his neighbor’s seemingly vacant home.  Three other farmers followed tentatively behind him.  An endless prairie stretched out on either side of the weather-beaten building.  A hungry calf languished in a nearby fenced enclosure...

As Ella “Kate” Watson sashayed down the crude staircase of the Rawlins, Wyoming saloon and brothel where she worked she inspected the potential customers in the smoke-filled bar.  Eager cowboys eyed her hourglass form as she brushed by them.  They sniffed the air after her, breathing in the scent of jasmine she left behind.  Kate...

Ellis Meredith was the daughter of pioneers. Born in Montana Territory, in 1865, she was the daughter of Emily R. Meredith, a well-known advocate for woman suffrage, and Frederick Allison, a journalist. The family had been drawn to the gold-rush boomtown and territorial capital of Bannack Montana, living there for a couple of years before...