Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

 

This volume is literally the title--the actual non-fiction letters of Mrs. Stewart to her former employer in Denver.

Mrs. Stewart arrives in Wyoming in 1909.

This book is full of pluck, grit, and wall to wall good cheer.

This is who I have in mind when I think of can-do.

Real letters, real life from a Bonafide hero.

I am in love with this woman.

A+ to the rafters.

Now onto some tasty extracts for the curious.

Baby has the rabbit you gave her last Easter a year ago. In Denver I was afraid my baby would grow up devoid of imagination. Like all the kindergartners, she depended upon others to amuse her. I was very sorry about it, for my castles in Spain have been real homes to me. But there is no fear. She has a block of wood she found in the blacksmith shop which she calls her "dear baby." A spoke out of a wagon wheel is "little Margaret," and a barrel-stave is "bad little Johnny."

·        Mrs. Stewart worried “Baby” needed more to amuse her, this a century before smartphones and video games.

·        Baby did just fine with what she had between her ears.

·        Even the young’uns had grit and imagination.

·        Think of Baby the next time you or someone utters “I’m bored.”

·        How would they/you fare in 1909 Wyoming?

Such a snowstorm I never saw! The snow had pressed the branches down lower, hence my bumped head. Our fire was burning merrily and the heat kept the snow from in front. I scrambled out and poked up the fire; then, as it was only five o'clock, I went back to bed. And then I began to think how many kinds of idiot I was. Here I was thirty or forty miles from home, in the mountains where no one goes in the winter and where I knew the snow got to be ten or fifteen feet deep. But I could never see the good of moping, so I got up and got breakfast while Baby put her shoes on. We had our squirrels and more baked potatoes and I had delicious black coffee.

·        Most would worry plenty in the above scenario but I could never see the good of moping, so I got up and got breakfast while Baby put her shoes on. We had our squirrels and more baked potatoes and I had delicious black coffee.

·        Let’s all have some delicious black coffee and keep on truckin’.

[Her lovely sign-off on one of her letters.]

I wish I could do nice things for you, but all I can do is to love you.

Your sincere friend, Elinore Rupert.

[Does faith require a building? A peer group? A reference point? Or perhaps just what is in the heart and soul?]

We were all so very tired that soon Carlota Juanita brought out an armful of the thickest, brightest rugs and spread them over the floor for us to sleep upon. The men retired to a lean-to room, where they slept, but not before Manuel Pedro Felipe and Carlota had knelt before their altar for their devotions. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy and myself and Jerrine, knowing the rosary, surprised them by kneeling with them. It is good to meet with kindred faith away off in the mountains. It seems there could not possibly be a mistake when people so far away from creeds and doctrines hold to the faith of their childhood and find the practice a pleasure after so many years.

·        What we cleave to [faith/creed/demeanor/habit/behavior] in stark austere circumstances is more likely of real faithful value than anything we tout in comfortable circumstances.

Before they had finished eating we heard a shot, followed by a regular medley of dull booms. The men were in their saddles and gone in less time than it takes to tell it. The firing had ceased save for a few sharp reports from the revolvers, like a coyote's spiteful snapping. The pounding of the horse's hoofs grew fainter, and soon all was still. I kept my ears strained for the slightest sound. The cook and the boss, the only men up, hurried back to bed. Watson had risen so hurriedly that he had not been careful about his "tarp" and water had run into his bed. But that wouldn't disconcert anybody but a tenderfoot.

·        May none of us be disconcerted by the small stuff—Don’t be a Tenderfoot.

[For the next extract, erysipelas is an infection caused by Group A Streptococcus bacterium. It is usually introduced by a cut—large or small. Now easily treatable by antibiotics. Yet another example of the hazards facing the hardy ones who chanced all.]

So you see I was very deceitful. Do you remember, I wrote you of a little baby boy dying? That was my own little Jamie, our first little son. For a long time my heart was crushed. He was such a sweet, beautiful boy. I wanted him so much. He died of erysipelas. I held him in my arms till the last agony was over. Then I dressed the beautiful little body for the grave. Clyde is a carpenter; so I wanted him to make the little coffin. He did it every bit, and I lined and padded it, trimmed and covered it. Not that we couldn't afford to buy one or that our neighbors were not all that was kind and willing; but because it was a sad pleasure to do everything for our little first-born ourselves.

·        Do we lose something of the “healing” power of the grieving process by avoiding the “unpleasant”?

·        By farming our dealing with loss to the commercialized “pros”?

·        Do those who meet grief, misfortune, good fortune head-on drink a truer brew of life?

[Mrs. Stewart answers my question.]

As there had been no physician to help, so there was no minister to comfort, and I could not bear to let our baby leave the world without leaving any message to a community that sadly needed it. His little message to us had been love, so I selected a chapter from John and we had a funeral service, at which all our neighbors for thirty miles around were present. So you see, our union is sealed by love and welded by a great sorrow.

[In the midst of work, year-round toil, the loss of a child, the following shining perspective bolts through the blue of Mrs. Stewart’s soul.]

It is true, I want a great many things I haven't got, but I don't want them enough to be discontented and not enjoy the many blessings that are mine. I have my home among the blue mountains, my healthy, well-formed children, my clean, honest husband, my kind, gentle milk cows, my garden which I make myself. I have loads and loads of flowers which I tend myself. There are lots of chickens, turkeys, and pigs which are my own special care. I have some slow old gentle horses and an old wagon. I can load up the kiddies and go where I please any time. I have the best, kindest neighbors and I have my dear absent friends. Do you wonder I am so happy? When I think of it all, I wonder how I can crowd all my joy into one short life.

[Think of the last time you complained of a poor night’s sleep in your comfy bed and compare it to this slumber in the winter outdoors in Wyoming.]

Our improvised beds were the most comfortable things; I love the flicker of an open fire, the smell of the pines, the pure, sweet air, and I went to sleep thinking how blest I was to be able to enjoy the things I love most.

[The next is offered after having to improvise a Christmas for a destitute settler family—all went to work to make gifts and decorations, even hanging paper ornaments from a makeshift tree with hairs plucked from one’s own head.]

We all got so much out of so little. I will never again allow even the smallest thing to go to waste.

[Temperament is the key word.]

To me, homesteading is the solution of all poverty's problems, but I realize that temperament has much to do with success in any undertaking, and persons afraid of coyotes and work and loneliness had better let ranching alone. At the same time, any woman who can stand her own company, can see the beauty of the sunset, loves growing things, and is willing to put in as much time at careful labor as she does over the washtub, will certainly succeed; will have independence, plenty to eat all the time, and a home of her own in the end.

·        Again, the keyword in that passage is “temperament.”

·        Some people are better than others, and that “betterness” is simply sheer force of choice of attitude.

·        One finds nary a whine in this volume.

I would not, for anything, allow Mr. Stewart to do anything toward improving my place, for I want the fun and the experience myself. And I want to be able to speak from experience when I tell others what they can do. Theories are very beautiful, but facts are what must be had, and what I intend to give some time.

·        I repeat that last sentence…

·        “Theories are very beautiful, but facts are what must be had.”

·        No mired in YouTube research.

·        No “Just one more podcast episode and I’ll get started.”

·        No, “If I only had some help or this doodad or…”

·        Just skip the theories and abstraction and GO!

We are so rushed with spring work that we don't even go to the office for the mail, and I owe you letters and thanks. I keep promising myself the pleasure of writing you and keep putting it off until I can have more leisure, but that time never gets here. I am so glad when I can bring a little of this big, clean, beautiful outdoors into your apartment for you to enjoy, and I can think of nothing that would give me more happiness than to bring the West and its people to others who could not otherwise enjoy them. If I could only take them from whatever is worrying them and give them this bracing mountain air, glimpses of the scenery, a smell of the pines and the sage,—if I could only make them feel the free, ready sympathy and hospitality of these frontier people, I am sure their worries would diminish and my happiness would be complete.

·        This is a woman who loves where she is, what she sees, what she smells no matter the hardships involved.

·        I love this Woman.

[Decisive jack-of-all-trades Heroes and Heroines. Read on…]

It was Mrs. O'Shaughnessy who was the real help. She is a woman of great courage and decision and of splendid sense and judgment. A few days ago a man she had working for her got his finger-nail mashed off and neglected to care for it. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy examined it and found that gangrene had set in. She didn't tell him, but made various preparations and then told him she had heard that if there was danger of blood-poisoning it would show if the finger was placed on wood and the patient looked toward the sun. She said the person who looked at the finger could then see if there was any poison. So the man placed his finger on the chopping-block and before he could bat his eye she had chopped off the black, swollen finger. It was so sudden and unexpected that there seemed to be no pain. Then Mrs. O'Shaughnessy showed him the green streak already starting up his arm. The man seemed dazed and she was afraid of shock, so she gave him a dose of morphine and whiskey. Then with a quick stroke of a razor she laid open the green streak and immersed the whole arm in a strong solution of bichloride of mercury for twenty minutes. She then dressed the wound with absorbent cotton saturated with olive oil and carbolic acid, bundled her patient into a buggy, and drove forty-five miles that night to get him to a doctor. The doctor told us that only her quick action and knowledge of what to do saved the man's life.

[In the next, finding the way out of the complaint hole, no matter what. BTW-The “drunken Mexican” reference is regarding a man found trashing a cabin where they had intended to camp. They rolled on to not face that danger. No calling 911, no post a poor review to Yelp, just roll on and make do.]

As he had made no move to help me, without answering him I clambered out of the wagon and began to take the horses loose. "Ho!" he said; "are you goin' to camp here?" "Yes, I am," I snapped. "Have you any objections?" "Oh, no, none that won't keep," he assured me. It has always been a theory of mine that when we become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can't think without bias; so I cast about me for something to be glad about, and the comfort that at least we were safer with a simpleton than near a drunken Mexican came to me; so I began to view the situation with a little more tolerance.

I repeat…

“It has always been a theory of mine that when we become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can't think without bias; so I cast about me for something to be glad about.”

[A zest for Life, for every damn bit of it.]

Did you ever eat pork and beans heated in a frying-pan on a camp-fire for breakfast? Then if you have not, there is one delight left you. But you must be away out in Wyoming, with the morning sun just gilding the distant peaks, and your pork and beans must be out of a can, heated in a disreputable old frying-pan, served with coffee boiled in a battered old pail and drunk from a tomato-can. You'll never want iced melons, powdered sugar, and fruit, or sixty-nine varieties of breakfast food, if once you sit Trilby-wise on Wyoming sand and eat the kind of breakfast we had that day.

·        Appreciative of every damn thing like a Poet of the World.

[Mrs. Stewart sums her experience.]

I have tried every kind of work this ranch affords, and I can do any of it. Of course I am extra strong, but those who try know that strength and knowledge come with doing. I just love to experiment, to work, and to prove out things, so that ranch life and "roughing it" just suit me.

·        Her lessons, her zest for life, her grit suits me just fine.

·        She goes into my Pantheon of Heroes of Real Life Warriors.

I love These Hosses of Yore!

I wanna be Elinore when I grow up.