The indisputable reality of classroom disorder presented a valid case against appeals for an end to birching. Birching was a form of discipline used by school teachers in which a birch rod was used on a bare bottom. Many frontier school houses were not a stable of docile lambs as television and motion pictures about that time period would like us to think. Many of the children were downright brats-hostile, ungovernable and prone to violence. In addition, the assembly in one room of pupils ranging in age from five to sixteen, with some strays even in their twenties, was an invitation to trouble. Under these circumstances the teacher was more warden than instructor, their routine more physical than intellectual. Some school boards in selecting new teachers made it a rule to pick a strong, stoutly built individual because they believed “baseness and vulgarity prevailed among the older boys.” Biting, eye-gouging and slug and scuffle matches were favorite sports, but boys saved the most barbaric excesses for strangers. “Let a boy from one town visit another and he was fortunate if he escaped with his life. The intervillage feuds made it incumbent upon the boys of one town to stone, beat, thrash such a casual visitor.” Faced with such ruffians, many teachers did not last a week, some not even a day. “In the Coloma, California district,” one pioneer noted, “the boys have driven off the last two schoolmarms and liked the one afore them.” Some parents and school board members took macabre delight in the encounter between a new teacher and the “boys,” some of whom were 175-pound six-footers. For schoolmarms such confrontations were a horrific ordeal. Margaret Banes, a school teacher in the San Bernardino area recalled: “I stormed up and down… This pathetic pretense of courage, aided by the mad flourishing of my razor strap, brought forth… the expression of respectful fear on the faces of the young giants.” However, while Miss Banes’s pantomime succeeded in cowing heavyweights who were old enough to go to sea, other schoolmistresses encountered continual discipline problems. One of these, a Miss Vega, taught public school in Sacramento. On October 8, 1870, the young woman, said to be in feeble health, punished four boys for unruly behavior by shutting them in the school building after class was out. Finally, when she released them, Miss Vega is said to have given the boys “a slight reprimand.” Their response was immediate; they stoned her to death.

There’s another new book on the way. Here’s a little about the exciting title. Author Chris Enss goes behind the lipstick and petticoats to reveal the real women who outran the law and upended gender stereotypes across America’s Heartland in her latest book Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Midwest. Readers will meet Flora Mundis, expert horse thief and jail breaker; murderess Elizabeth Reed, the first and only woman hanged in Illinois; Belle Black and Jennie Freeman, who shot their way through hold ups and alongside the men of the Wyatt-Black Gang; and Anne Cook, bootlegger and madam, who killed her own daughter in cold blood. Illustrated with historical photographs, Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Midwest uncovers the true lives long veiled by the glamour of dime novels and sensational tabloid accounts. Cozy up (if you dare) with these women, both sensuous and sinister, as they rampage across the Midwest. Chris Enss has written more than twenty books on the subject of women of the Old West, including Hearts West: Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier and Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman. Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Midwest was published by FarCountry Press will be available in book stores October 15, 2012. Visit www.chrisenss.com for more information about the book or to schedule an interview.

Press Release

For Immediate Release:

Lonely Hearts Advertise;
Object Matrimony

Grass Valley, CA. – Optimistic men and women pioneers expressed their desire for a spouse in advertisements that ran in popular frontier newspapers and magazines. A new book entitled Object Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier offers readers an entertaining look at the serious business of finding a husband or wife by mail-order in the wide-open days of the Old West.
Desperate to strike it rich or eager for free land, men went west alone and sacrificed many creature comforts. Only after they arrived at their destinations did some of them realize how much they missed female companionship. One way for men living on the frontier to meet women was through personal ads placed in newspapers such as Matrimonial News. Eventually a man might convince a woman to join him in the West, and in matrimony.
Object Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier was written by Chris Enss. Enss is the author of more than two dozen books published by Globe Pequot Press on the subject of women of the Old West. The national launch of the book will be held on Saturday, October 6 at the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Nevada City, California from noon until 3 p.m.. In addition to sharing stories about frontier mail-order brides and marriage brokers with guests that attend the launch festivities, musical entertainment and refreshments will also be available. A wedding dress made by fashion designer, Christian Goodwin for Prairie Lace Designs, will be given away at the launch as well.
Object Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier will be available in bookstores everywhere in October. For more information contact the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum at 530-470-0902 or Chris Enss at 530-477-8859

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