Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Too Fond of Books: Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore ...

I wish this book had a different title, something like Letters of a Fiesty, Funny, and Thoroughly Modern Woman Homesteader , but I suppose the publishing world was a little more to the point in 1914. When I found this book via the  Seattle Public Library's  online catalogue I considered it a text to skim through for research, but didn't expect much from it beyond that.  My first impression of this book was so wrong! In my last post I mentioned my love for the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In her collection of letters, Elinore Pruitt Stewart offers us a grown up version of life on the frontier but with the same type of humor and sense of wonder Wilder gave to us in her books. Stewart focuses only on the positive elements of her experiences, but that is due partly to the fact that she doesn't want to worry the friend she's writing to and partly because that is Stewart's way of looking at the world: "If only you knew how far short I fall of my own hopes you would know I could never boast. Why, it keeps me busy making over mistakes just like some one using old clothes. I get myself all ready to enjoy a success and find that I have to fit a failure. But one consolation is that I generally have plenty of material to cut generously, and many of my failures have proved to be real blessings." Stewart looks at all aspects of her life as an adventure; she is an explorer of possibilities. She is also a woman who does not accept that societal obstacles typical for a woman of her era have anything to do with her. In 1913, Stewart was a widow with a small child in Denver, Colorado. When she began feeling closed in by city life, she decided that there was no reason a single mother couldn't take advantage of the Homestead Act, which gave title to undeveloped land to a homesteader who successfully settled and "improved" land west of the Mississippi. Stewart determined that she would go to the Wyoming territory and prove that a woman could do this on her own. Her plan depended in large part on getting a job that would support her and her daughter while she homesteaded. She became the housekeeper and cook for rancher Clyde Stewart and took title on property that lay directly next to his. That way, she could both work for him AND work on her own property. Though they eventually married, she refused any assistance from him in improving and managing her own homestead.

Letters of a woman homesteader

Letters on an elk hunt, by a woman homesteader

Letters of a Woman Homesteader

The Adventures of the Woman Homesteader, The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart

My blue and gold Wyoming, the life and letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart