women in history

“The gambler is a moral suicide.”Reverend Charles Caleb Colton – 1832 On July 9, 1871, two ragged, down-and-out prospectors walked into the Bank of California in San Francisco and approached a dignified looking clerk waiting behind a giant oak desk. The two hungry-looking men quietly inquired about renting a safe deposit box. The clerk eyed...

In 1854, Eliza Mott recognized the need for education in the Carson Valley and she decided to do something about it.  The dedicated wife and mother started the first school in Nevada in her own home and became the state’s first schoolteacher. Due to her achievements in the field of learning, education became important in...

Her real name is Martha Canary, but everyone today knows her as Calamity Jane. There are many myths about this wild woman who sometimes passed as a man and may, or may not, have been a Soiled Dove. For one thing, she is thought to be the most written about Western American woman of the...

Nature writer and conservationist John Muir sat alone at a table in the Leidig Hotel in Yosemite, patiently waiting for the breakfast he ordered to be served.  He was a tall, gangly, bearded man deeply focused on a stack of geological surveys in front of him.  The hotel kitchen doors swung open and appetizing aroma...

Fifteen-year-old Bethenia Owens-Hill stared out the window of her aunt’s farmhouse, rocking her infant son to sleep.  A brisk wind pelted the glass with sand and dust.  Drought-twisted sagebrush tumbled past her bleak, hazy view and continued on.  Bethenia’s baby whimpered a bit and she kissed his tiny forehead.  Tears drifted down her face and...

Living in loneliness on the plains or in the mountains of the West without female friends on hand except for the occasional traveler, who may or may not be inclined to be social, the solitary male exile was completely cut off from the companionship of a woman.  These lonely souls, who represented a mass of...

On February 17, 1894, the posh Chamberlain Restaurant in Washington, D.C., was filled to capacity with well-dressed guests enjoying the elegant ambiance and sumptuous food. Forty-eight-year-old William Cody was among the fashionably coiffed patrons. Wearing a tailored suit and tie, he was seated at one of the pristinely set tables. His long hair was combed...

A lively, petite woman with dark hair and dark eyes coaxed a pair of blonde mares pulling a well-used buggy toward a train depot in Taylorsville, Texas.  When the vehicle reached the building, she tugged on the reins, and the horses came to a quick stop.  Nine curious men waiting on the platform and carefully...