women of the west

“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...

“From reckless despair she drifted into the life; it is with determination bordering on reckless that she starts to quit it.” Josie Washburn’s thoughts on the reformation of a prostitute – 1905 A large wagon filled with fallen angels rattled down a dusty street in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was daylight, but a hard rain obscured...

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...

The lines on the elderly woman’s face were a roadmap of her life—deeply etched like the wagon tracks that had brought her west to the Oregon Territory in 1852. Under the ornate black hat she wore for the momentous occasion, her face was alight with joy and accomplishment. Abigail Jane Scott Duniway was seventy-eight years...

Actress Jeanne Eagels was an attractive, petite entertainer with delicate features.  According to her friends and peers she was childish, adult, reasonable, unreasonable – usually one when she should be the other, but always unpredictable.  The Oscar nominated actress was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri.  She was the...

In September 1884, six weary journalists spent three unusually hot and humid days loitering around the New York harbor waiting for the world-famous entertainer Lotta Crabtree to arrive.  Lotta was on her way to the city where she had perfected her career.  The moment her steamship docked, the scribes rifled through their pockets for pencils...

In 1847 the western territory of the United States was a sleepy wilderness populated mostly by Indians and Mexicans.  But when word reached the eastern states that there were rich deposits of gold in the mountains of the frontier, the region changed virtually overnight.  Two hundred thousand restless souls, mostly men, but including some women...

More than 150 years have passed since President Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed at Ford’s Theatre.  Tragedy ensued for many people with Lincoln that night in April 1865.  For example, Lincoln’s guest Major Henry Rathbone was cut savagely with the knife John Wilkes Booth unsheathed after emptying his Derringer at Lincoln.   Laura Keene, the...