Journal Notes

Enter to win a book for history lovers and brides to be who believe the risk is worth it all – Object Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Bride Matchmaking on the Western Frontier.

Desperate to strike it rich during the Western Gold Rushes and eager for the free land afforded them through the Homestead Act, 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 subscriptions to heart-and-hand clubs. The men received newspapers with information, and sometimes photographs, about women, with whom they corresponded. Eventually, a man might convince a woman to join him in the West, and in matrimony. Social status, political connections, money, companionship, or security were often considered more than love in these arrangements.

Complete with historic photographs and actual advertisements from both women seeking husbands and males seeking brides, Object Matrimony includes stories of courageous mail order brides and their exploits as well as stories of the marriage brokers, mercenary matchmakers looking to profit as merchants did off of the miners and settlers. Some of these stories end happily ever after; others reveal desperate situations that robbed the brides of their youth and sometimes their lives.

To learn more about the mail-order brides and the ads that lured them West read Object Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier.

The winners of the Holiday giveaway are…

Teresa Benjamin, Roger Southern, and Linda Mohn.

Each will receive a book of their choice from the catalog of titles and 2017 calendar.

Congratulations!

Stay tuned for another giveaway contest next week.

I Have a Present For You!

To Say Thank You for Your Continued Support I Have a Present I’d Like to Send.

It’s a Women of the Old West Calendar for the New Year.

Sign Up to Receive News about Upcoming Books and Contests and

I’ll Send You a 2017 Calendar. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

Spend the holidays with a few ladies from the Old West.

Enter the Find the Snowman contest and register to win a copy of any book you want from the catalog of titles about women of the Old West.

Enter to win when you find the snowman and pick a book you’d like to have from the

author’s catalog.

Author’s favorite: Wicked Women

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled doves, and other wicked women offers a glimpse into Western Women’s experience that’s less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. During the late nineteenth century, while men were settling the new frontier and rushing off to the latest boom towns, women of easy virtue found wicked lives west of the Mississippi when they followed fortune hunters seeking gold and land in an unsettled territory. Prostitutes and female gamblers hoped to capitalize on the vices of the intrepid pioneers. Pulling together stories of ladies caught in the acts of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, it will include famous names like Belle Starr and Big Nose Kate, as well as lesser known characters.

Enter to win and pick a book you’d like to have from the author’s catalog. 

Author’s favorite:  Thunder Over the Prairie.

The gripping tale of a murder in Dodge City

in 1878―and how legendary lawmen chased down the killer

Enter to win a book of your choice! 

From Outlaw Tales of California to The Doctor Wore Petticoats

and all the titles in between.

A New York Times Bestseller! “No women need apply.” Western towns looking for a local doctor during the frontier era often concluded their advertisements in just that manner. Yet apply they did. And in small towns all over the West, highly trained women from medical colleges in the East took on the post of local doctor to great acclaim.

Enter to win a copy of Outlaw Tales of California

True Stories of the Golden’s State’s Most Infamous Crooks, Culprits, and Cutthroats.

Stories of the bandits, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, and highwaymen of the Old West have intrigued readers since the first pioneers ventured across the plains. More than 125 years after outlaw Jessie James made a famously candid statement about the public’s continuing interest in criminals, people continue to be drawn to the tales of the desperadoes who roamed the wild frontier. As Jesse aptly commented in 1879, “All the world likes an outlaw. For some damn reason they remember them.”

A lawless element followed the daring collection of prospectors, hard-working emigrant men and women, and enterprising farmers to the gold fields of California. While civilized pioneers were building churches, schools, theaters, and hotels, thieves and outlaws were terrorizing camp followers, looting mining claims, and robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches.

Where liquor ran freely, it seemed so did crime. Alcohol often eroded away any effort ambitious sojourners painstakingly made to tame the rowdy territory. Drunkenness, banditry, and violence plagued the California boomtowns, provoking frightened citizens to take the law into their own hands, or appoint willing, but unqualified, peace officers to act on their behalf.

Many of the outlaws who dominated sections of the rugged territory were desperate men who were once honest members of the community, but who felt forced by circumstances into a life of evil. In the later part of the 1860s, a majority of the offenders were veterans of the Civil War, ex-Confederate soldiers like Cole Younger, Frank Dalton, and Ben Thompson, who were convinced they no longer had a country of their own, or a choice but to become a criminal.

Outlaw Tales of California contains the tales and adventures of the most famous rebels and brigands in California’s history. Listed among the wanted men of long ago are Black Bart, the notorious highwayman who rarely left the scene of a crime without leaving a poem behind; John Allen, the barber turned horse thief also known as Sheet-Iron Jack; and the most feared bandit of all, “Bloody” Joaquin Murieta.

To learn more about the bad guys of the Gold Country read Outlaw Tales of California:

True Stories of the Golden’s State’s Most Infamous

Crooks, Culprits, and Cutthroat.

Congratulations to Sandy Schmitt.  Sandy is the winner of a copy of

With Great Hope:  Women of the California Gold Rush!

Next week’s giveaway will be something special.

Check back on Monday to register to win!

They came to California with great hope for the future-they left a legacy.

Enter to win a copy of

With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.

The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 set off a siren call that many Americans couldn’t resist. Enthusiastic pioneers headed west intent on picking up a fortune in the nearest stream. Though only a few actually used a pickax in the search for a fortune, women played a major role in the California Gold Rush. They discovered wealth working as cooks, writers, photographers, performers, or lobbyists. Some even realized dreams greater than gold in the western land of opportunity and others experienced unspeakable tragedy.

Rain dripped steadily from the bare trees outside the dark parlor. The bride stood at the top of the stairs, a red rose sent from her best friend pinned inside her dress. Unveiled, she started down the steps to the man who waited to marry her.

She had resisted his courtship and insisted that marriage did not fit her plans. The young engineer standing at the foot of the staircase had made his own plans. He arrived out of the wild West with a “now or never” declaration. He had taken off his large hooded overcoat, placed his pipe and pistol on the bureau in the room that had belonged to the bride’s grandmother, and the quiet force of his intent carried the day.

The bride well knew that the Quaker marriage ceremony puts the responsibility for making the vows directly on those who must keep them. She descended the stairs, catching sight of her parents, a handful of other family members, her best friend’s husband, and the man she had finally agreed to marry.

Mary Hallock gripped the arm of Arthur De Wint Foote and stepped up in front of the assembly of Friends, as the Quakers called themselves, to speak those irrevocable vows. She was twenty-nine, with an established career as an illustrator for the best magazines of the day. She had carefully considered what she would give up by taking this step. Arthur was a mining engineer, and his work was in the West. She was an artist, and all her contacts were in Boston and New York. She faced forward with a mixture of anxiety and joy.

To learn more about the amazing Mary Hallock Foote and her life and career in the West or about any of the other women who made their mark on the

Gold Rush read:

With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.