Pioneer Women of the West

AN appropriate supplement to the memoirs of the "Women of the American Revolution," is the story of the wives and mothers who ventured into the western wilds, and bore their part in the struggles and labors of the early pioneers. Indeed, so obvious a consequence of the Revolution was the diffusion of the spirit of emigration, that the one work naturally calls for the other, the domestic history of the period being incomplete without it. To supply this want, very little published material existed, and that little in the shape of brief anecdotes, scattered through historical collections made in several Western States, and scarcely known in other parts of the Union. But a vast store might be yielded from the records of private families, and the still vivid recollections of individuals who had passed through the experiences of frontier and forest life, and it was not yet too late to save from oblivion much that would be the more interesting and valuable, as the memory of those primitive times receded into the past. Application has been made, accordingly, to the proper sources throughout the Western States, and the result enables me to offer such a series of authentic sketches as will not only exhibit the character of many pioneer matrons—characters that would pass for strongly marked originals in any fiction—but will afford a picture of the times in the progressive settlement of the whole country, from Tennessee to Michigan. To render this picture as complete as possible, descriptions of the domestic life and manners of the pioneers, and illustrative anecdotes from reliable sources, have been interwoven with the memoirs, and notice has been taken of such political events as had an influence on the condition of the country. Read more