October 23rd, 2008

It’s so good to finally be home. It feels like I’ve been away a long time. I guess travel will do that to you. Tombstone was great! Linda and Nancy at Old West Books are the kind of people every author hopes to work with. They did a wonderful job of staging the store event. There’s no time to rest now. There’s a big book event at the Nevada County library tomorrow I’ll be attending. I’m grateful for the opportunity to promote the books locally. I thought I’d post a review of Frontier Teachers on the site today. As soon as I collect my thoughts I’ll write more about my journey. Till then?. Book review: ‘Frontier Teachers,’ by Chris Enss By Alicia Funk, “Frontier Teachers-Stories of Heroic Women of the Old West” offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of twelve of the 600 women adventurous women who dedicated themselves to teaching in the west between 1847 and 1858. During this time, the only respectable job choices for women were working as a seamstress, nurse or teacher. Prepared and determined, typically single women traveled west in rough wagon trains to build schools, raise money for school supplies and construction, and teach pioneer children and orphans of parents desperately seeking gold. Grass Valley author Chris Enss uses a light, direct tone and easy-to-read language to explore the minds and hearts of these pioneering women, in some cases using their own words through excerpts from their journals. A gun-slinging 22-year-old teacher, Olive Mann Isbell, protected her mission school from the Mexican Army. Her thoughts on life in California on November 14, 1849: “I have all that I want here, and what more could I have elsewhere? I have tried luxury without health, and a wild mountain life with it. Give me the latter, with the free air, the dashing streams, the swinging woods, the laughing flowers and the exulting birds.”The “grandmother teacher,” 66-year-old Tabitha Brown, embarked on the 9-month journey across the plains from Missouri to Oregon to establish and run for ten years the school that became Pacific University, while saving $1,000 from her efforts. The journal entries of Mary Graves Clarke, offer an intimate retelling of the infamous Donner Party. Mary was a beautiful, fearless 19-year-old girl in 1846, when she left Indiana with her family to join the Donner Party and headed for California. By mid-December of 1856, Mary was in the rescue party of 15 who left the camp to get help for the starving party trapped at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Her father died on the way, calling her to his side, “You have to do whatever you can to stay alive. Think of your mother and brothers and sisters in the cabin at the lake. If you don’t make it to Sutter’s Fort, and send help, everyone at the lake will die. I want you to do what you have to …Use my flesh to stay alive.”She later became a teacher in San Jose, but her past cheerful disposition was forever replaced with sorrow. The stories of dedication and personal sacrifice help deepen our understanding of the importance of women in the days of the Wild West. The commitment of frontier teachers to do whatever it takes to educate America’s children remind us to keep their promise alive today. Chris Enss has written more than a dozen books on women in the Old West. She will be a presenter Oct. 24 at “A Moveable Feast” at the Madelyn Helling Library Reading Room, Nevada City. Call 265-1407 for more information. Alicia Funk is a Nevada City author with a Bachelor of Arts in history and a passion for reading.