Journal Notes

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, with independence won and the Indians largely subdued, the great tide of western movement across the North American continent was gaining momentum.  One of the first railroad lines that transported people from the East to the West was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  Construction on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began in July 1828, and the first stretch of rails was completed in 1830.  More than ninety years later, the rail line was still carrying passengers to destinations beyond the Missouri River and still establishing themselves as leaders in the industry.  In 1920, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad executives made the bold decision to hire a woman in their engineering department.  Not only was Olive Dennis the first female professional engineer hired by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but she was also the first female ever to be hired in that field for a major rail line.

As a child growing up in Baltimore, Olive enjoyed working with tools.  She frequently borrowed her father’s tools to disassemble her mechanical toys.  Olive was born on November 20, 1885, in Thurlow, Pennsylvania, and at the age of eleven decided to build her own playhouse.  She spent days watching the construction of a new home across the street from where she lived and was convinced she could duplicate the work she saw being done.  Using recycled wood from an old shed her father had torn down, Olive designed and built a playhouse complete with windows, shutters, doors, and a full porch with stairs.

Olive excelled scholastically, graduating from Western High School with honors and a scholarship to attend Goucher College.  She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa there and achieved a Bachelor of Arts degree.  From Goucher she went on to Columbia in New York where she received a master’s degree in mathematics.  While teaching school in Wisconsin, she decided to study civil engineering at Cornell University.  Olive was only the second woman in the school’s history to pursue such a degree.

To learn more about Olive Dennis and other women who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

Although the physical task of building the railroad had been achieved by men, women made significant and lasting contributions to the historic operation.  The female connection with railroading dates as far back as 1838 when women were hired as registered nurses/stewardesses in passenger cars.  Those ladies attended to the medical needs of travelers and also acted as hostesses of sorts, helping passengers have a comfortable journey.

Susan Morningstar was one of the first women on record employed by a railroad.  She and her sister, Catherine Shirley, were hired by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1855 to keep the interior of the cars clean and orderly.  The feminine, homey touches they added to the railroad car’s décor attracted female travelers and transformed the stark, cold interior into a more welcoming setting.

Miss E. F. Sawyer became the first female telegraph operator when she was hired by the Burlington Railroad in Montgomery, Illinois, in 1872.  The following year, Union Pacific Railroad executives followed suit by hiring two women to be telegraph operators in Kansas City, Missouri.

Inventress Eliza Murfey focused on the mechanics of the railroad, creating devices for improving the way bearings on the rail wheel attached to train cars responded to the axles.  The device, or packing as it was referred to, was used to lubricate the axles and bearings.  Murfey held sixteen patents for her 1870 invention.

In 1879, another woman inventor named Mary Elizabeth Walton developed a system that deflected emissions from the smokestacks on railroad locomotives.  She was awarded two patents for her pollution reducing device.

A cattle rancher’s daughter, Nancy P. Wilkerson, from Terre Haute, Indiana, created the cattle car in 1881.  Using a rack and pinion mechanism, she devised sliding partisans that separated the livestock from the food compartments and water troughs.

To learn more about the women who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

The Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad operated as it usually did on April 10, 1901.  It ran as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.  The wood burning engine proceeded along its customary route without delay or interruption, giving no indication that the line’s president and owner had passed away.

John Flint Kidder had taken charge of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad in 1884.  He was a construction engineer with both the vision to maintain the line and the business sense to manage it.  The twenty-five-mile route connected the gold mines in northern California to the outside world.  The tracks threaded the canyons and rolling countryside between Nevada City and Grass Valley and the Central Pacific main line in Colfax.  The route included steep grades, two tunnels, and several trestles, the highest being ninety-five feet above the Bear River.  Kidder’s Narrow Gauge carried more gold (some $300 million) than any other short line in the state.  He was well respected and admired by a community that owed its progress to him.

Concern over the economic impact Kidder’s passing would have on the area was so great it’s surprising the railroad ran at all the day he died.  Business owners whom benefitted from the railroad worried there would be an interruption in service that would threaten their livelihood.  Rumors about who would take John Kidder’s place as head of the rail line did not immediately set the minds of those businessmen at ease.

John Kidder’s widow, Sarah, was aware there were those who doubted she was the right one to assume control of the Narrow Gauge Railroad, but she was determined to prove she was up to the task.  Less than a month after her husband’s death, stockholders chose Sarah as John’s successor.  According to an article in the September 20, 1901, edition of the Oakdale Leader, when Sarah Kidder accepted the job “she had the distinction of being one of the very few women, if not the only one, who ever held such a bona fide position and title.”

To learn more about Sarah Kidder and other women who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

The cold, gray January sky above Virginia City, Nevada, in 1867 unleashed a torrent of sleet on a slow-moving funeral procession traveling along the main thoroughfare of town.  Several members of the volunteer fire department, Virginia Engine Company Number One, were first in a long line of mourners following after a horse drawn carriage transporting the body of soiled dove Julia Bulette.  Playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me”, the Nevada militia band shuffled behind the hearse.  Black wreaths and streamers hung from the balconies of the buildings along the route which the remains of the beloved thirty-five-year-old woman were escorted.  Miners who knew Julia wept openly.  Out of respect for the deceased woman, all the saloons were closed.  Plummeting temperatures and icy winds eventually drove the majority of funeral-goers inside their homes and businesses before Julia was lowered into the ground.

Julia Bulette was murdered on January 19, 1867 at 11:30 in the evening in her home on North D Street in Virginia City.   The fair but frail prostitute told her neighbor and best friend Gertrude Holmes she was expecting company but did not specify whom the company might be.  Twelve hours later Gertrude discovered Julia’s lifeless body in bed.  She had been beaten and strangled.  Gertrude told authorities that Julia was lying in the center of the bed with the blankets pulled over her head and that the sheets under her frame were smooth.  She told police that it appeared as though no one had ever been in the bed with Julia.

To learn more about women who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

Enter now to win a copy of

Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, with independence won and the Indians largely subdued, the great tide of western movement across the North American continent was gaining momentum.  One of the first railroad lines that transported people from the East to the West was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  Construction on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began in July 1828, and the first stretch of rails was completed in 1830.  More than ninety years later, the rail line was still carrying passengers to destinations beyond the Missouri River and still establishing themselves as leaders in the industry.  In 1920, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad executives made the bold decision to hire a woman in their engineering department.  Not only was Olive Dennis the first female professional engineer hired by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but she was also the first female ever to be hired in that field for a major rail line.

As a child growing up in Baltimore, Olive enjoyed working with tools.  She frequently borrowed her father’s tools to disassemble her mechanical toys.  Olive was born on November 20, 1885, in Thurlow, Pennsylvania, and at the age of eleven decided to build her own playhouse.  She spent days watching the construction of a new home across the street from where she lived and was convinced, she could duplicate the work she saw being done.  Using recycled wood from an old shed her father had torn down, Olive designed and built a playhouse complete with windows, shutters, doors, and a full porch with stairs.

To learn more about the women who helped build the American railroad read

Iron Women

Enter now to win a copy of

Iron Women:  Ladies Who Helped Build the American Railroad

Phoebe Snow might have been a fictional character created by executive Earnest Elmo Calkins for the Calkins and Holden Advertising Agency in 1900, but she was one of the most influential women in the area of railroad travel for more than twenty years.[i]

Phoebe Snow was created to sell the idea of cleanliness in traveling on a railroad, specifically the Lackawanna, a short line that ran between Buffalo and New York City.  The Lackawanna used sootless anthracite coal exclusively for locomotive fuel.  Phoebe always wore a spotless white dress that was always cool looking, comfortable, and corsaged with orchids.  She became so popular as a symbol of cleanliness, and was lodged so surely in the hearts and minds of train travelers, that her name was printed in big, bold, white letters on every piece of equipment owned by the Lackawanna.[ii]

Sometime prior to the first World War, the Lackawanna decided to introduce a fast, new passenger train to compete in the luxury market for wealthy rail travelers.  This new train was to be the last word in elegance, comfort, prestige, and speed.  When it came time to find a name it seemed as if the “Phoebe Snow” was the only name that was considered – yet up to this time, no train had been named for a woman.  From that day forward, Phoebe Snow was to become the most famous of all deluxe passenger trains.[iii]

In the history of railroading, there were only two other passenger trains that were comparable in elegance, grandeur, and speed to the Phoebe Snow.  They were the New York Central’s Twentieth Century Limited and the Great Northern’s Empire Builder.[iv]

The real Phoebe Snow was the first of all pin-up girls, and she was the rage of her day.  She was the figment of the imagination of Earnest Elmo Calkins and was first painted by Harry Stacy Benton.  The model was Marian Murray Gorsch, one of the first models used in advertising.[v]

Many of the advertisements featuring Phoebe Snow included a short poem.  The poem associated with the first advertisement read as follows; “Says Phoebe Snow, about to go upon a trip to Buffalo.  My gown stays white from morn till night upon the Road of Anthracite.”[vi]

Phoebe’s career ended in 1922, four years after the end of World War I.  Anthracite was needed solely for military use and was subsequently prohibited by railroads.  Phoebe’s services were no longer needed.[vii]

To learn more about the ladies who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

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Iron Women:  Ladies Who Helped Build the American Railroad

The Harvey Car Courier Corps will take you away “into the beckoning, foot-loose distances of New Mexico,” reads the Santa Fe Railway brochure on Indian Detours.  The brochures were distributed to train travelers crossing the arid Southwest desert in the late 1920s, who were looking for adventure and romance.^[i]

Indian Detours were created by the Fred Harvey Company in 1925.  The popularity of the automobile and the airplane had created a lull in railroad travel.  The Harvey Company introduced the detours in hopes of encouraging the public to journey by train to their next vacation destination.  The tours were only available for the Southwest part of the country, from the Grand Canyon to Santa Fe.  The specialized tours by car were to divert passengers from the train for one to three days and drive them through the “wilderness panoramas” of northern New Mexico to Indian ruin sites and living pueblos.^[ii]

The drivers of the Harvey vehicles, which included Packards, Franklins, Cadillacs, and White Motor Company buses, were always men.  The tour guides or “couriers” were always women.  Executives at the Harvey Company believed following the business model of the Harvey Girls would assure the success of the Indian Detours.^[iii]

The women selected to be members of the Harvey Car Courier Corps spent weeks training for their positions.  In order to be qualified tour guides, they were required to know the archaeological, ethnological, cultural, geological, botanical, historical, and legislative makeup of New Mexico.  It was necessary that the information they shared with travelers was accurate.  The couriers attended lectures and participated in trips along the detour trail.  According to the March 12, 1975, edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican, the majority of the Harvey Car Courier Corps members found the work interesting.  Aside from teaching school, there were very few interesting jobs for women post World War I.  Couriers earned $150 a month, $160 a month if they spoke a foreign language and could communicate with travelers from other countries.^[iv]

Among the well-known individuals who took advantage of the Indian Detours was Albert Einstein, John D. Rockefeller, Will Rogers, and Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the wireless telegraphy.^[v]

The Harvey Couriers were required to dress in Navaho-style costumes while giving the tours.  The authentic outfit consisted of velveteen skirt, concha belts, and squash blossom necklaces.^[vi]

The tours originated from the Harvey Houses: the Castaneda in Las Vegas, New Mexico; the Alvarado in Albuquerque; the Ortiz in Lamy; and the Navajo in Gallup.  The most popular detour trips were to the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, and the Indian Pueblos in Taos and Santa Clara.  The cost for the tours ranged from $10 to $14 a day.^[vii]

The Great Depression brought about the end of the Indian Detours and the Harvey Couriers

[i] Carlsbad Current-Argus, February 10, 1928

[ii]Ibid., https://santafeselection.com/blog/2014/06/21/Indian-detours-now,

[iii] The Santa Fe New Mexican, March 12, 1978

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] https://santafeselection.com/blog/2014/06/21/Indian-detours-now

[vii] Albuquerque Journal, February 6, 1928

To learn more about the ladies who influenced and built the American railroad read Iron Women.

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroads

When the last spike was hammered into the steel track of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah, Western Union lines sounded the glorious news of the railroad’s completion. At 2:45 p.m. on that day, the following dispatch was received at New York.[i]

“Promontory Summit, Utah, May 10 – The last rail is laid! The last spike is driven! The Pacific Railroad is complete! The point of junction is 1086 miles west of the Missouri River, and 690 miles east of Sacramento City.”[ii]

For more than five years, an estimated four thousand men, mostly Irish working west from Omaha and Chinese working east from Sacramento, moved like a vast assembly line toward the end of the track.[iii] Editorials in newspapers and magazines from coast to coast praised the accomplishment, and some boasted that the work “was begun, carried on, and completed solely by men.” The August 1869 edition of Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine reported, “No woman has laid a rail; no woman has made a survey.” The article added that “the muscular force and the intellectual guidance have come alike from men. It is worthwhile for the women who are clamoring for the suffrage to reflect whether the right to vote does not imply a capacity for the hard work of subduing the world, mental and physical, to which so far only men have been found competent.[iv]

“We have indicated again and again in this publication what we believe to be the true sphere of woman: in the home, in society, among the poor; refining and ennobling social intercourse; alleviating the misery of the world. She can do these things now; if she contests man’s work with him, she can do them no longer. Not by her hand can build the city…or the railroad.”[v]

Although the physical task of building the railroad had been achieved by men, women made significant and lasting contributions to the historic operation. The female connection with railroading dates as far back as 1838, when women were hired as registered nurses/stewardesses in passenger cars. Those ladies attended to the medical needs of travelers and acted as hostesses of sorts, helping passengers have a comfortable journey.

To learn more about women who helped by the American railroads read Iron Women

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Thunder Over the Prairie:

The Story of a Murder and a Manhunt by the Greatest Posse of All Time

A crowd of Texas trail hands watched the prairie hurry past them as they pressed their rides into a full gallop. A whistle from a train racing in the opposite direction issued a long blast that floated over miles of grassy fields. Dr. Henry Hoyt, part-time cowboy, and physician for the King Ranch, was out in front of the riders, an unlit cigar was clamped tightly between his jaws. Like the others on horseback beside him, he was dressed in rough clothing of the cattle trail. His tall hat was pushed back from his sunburned face. When he and his cohorts left Dodge City, they had in mind to intercept the posse pursuing James Kenedy and give the wealthy cattleman a chance to get out of the territory safely. Shortly after they started on their way, it was decided they should return to the ranch in southern Texas and inform James’s father about the incident involving his son.

The King Ranch, located between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, sprawled across six Texas counties. Hundreds of hands worked the more than twelve-hundred-and-eighty-mile spread. Dr. Hoyt suspected when Mifflin Kenedy learned about the trouble James was in, that he would dispatch a legion of dutiful men, indignant over the harsh treatment of a fellow Texan. Hundreds of discontented cowboys who believed their occasional, illegal actions deserved a free pass because of the hundreds of dollars they spent in Dodge, would go to great lengths to champion one another. Dr. Hoyt knew this and knew that Captain Kenedy was aware of it as well. Mifflin’s organized efforts on behalf of his son would be more effective than 25 or 30 rogue hands acting independently. It was with that thought in mind that Dr. Hoyt and friends headed off in the direction of the Chisholm Trail towards home.

A cold wind hissed through the cracks of the walls and doors of a sprawling, dilapidated mud and wood store near a place called Mulberry Crossing, 27 miles south of Dodge City. With the exception of an inebriated trail hand, the dusty stretch in front of the business was deserted and still. A weathered sign over the entrance read, A.H. Dugan, owner. Dugan, a heavy man who had sagging jowls and thinning black hair combed across his sweaty scalp, ran the stage stop which was a combination mercantile and saloon. He was wiping a mop rag over a rugged wood table when Bat Masterson and Bill Tilghman entered. Three riders with the look of seasoned cattlemen and the sound of Texas in their voices, were seated in the back of the room and looked up from their poker game at the police officers. The tension in the air seemed almost visible.

The cowboys continued on with their game as Bat and Bill meandered over to the bar. “It’s two bits for a bucket of water for your horses,” Dugan said, blowing the dust off a can of peaches and putting them back on the shelf. “We’re looking for someone who might have come by here,” Bat stated. “It’s still two bits,” Dugan replied unimpressed. The lawmen politely explained who they were looking for and described James Kenedy. Dugan told them no one that looked like Kenedy had been through. “And I would know,” he added. “I know every teamster, trail hand, and stage driver that passes by.”

Bat turned his attention to the men playing cards. The cowboys were too engrossed with their hands to care. Dugan told the officers that the ranchers were part of a nearby spread that had come in to load up on provisions and decided to stay for a game and a bottle. Satisfied with the response, Bat and Bill turned to leave. “What did this fellow do?” Dugan asked before the men reached the door. Bill told him that he’d shot a woman in Dodge. “She was a singer,” he elaborated. “Her name was Dora Hand.”

Dugan’s expression fell. He removed a bottle of cheap liquor from under the counter and poured himself a drink. “Damn shame,” he said sadly as he lifted the glass to his lips. “My sister dragged me to the Union church some months back,” Dugan confessed. “Miss Hand sang a solo. Prettiest thing I ever did hear.” The gruff businessman hummed a bit of the hymn he was recalling before asking Bill if he had known Dora. “Yes,” Bill kindly answered, “I knew her.” Before exiting the building, Bat warned Dugan and his patrons not to say anything about their passing through. “When you find the murderer, I hope you kill him,” Dugan snapped. “It may come to that,” Bat promised.

Wyatt and Charlie, who had been surveying the area around the primitive store, hopped aboard their horses at the same time Bat and Bill mounted up. Charlie let them know they hadn’t had any luck finding Kenedy’s tracks. “I think we need to get a wire to the Sheriff of Cheyenne,” Bat said adjusting himself in the saddle. “We’ve been through this, Bat,” Charlie announced. “Kenedy’s talk about Wyoming is a blind,” Bill added looking over the landscape. “He followed the Arkansas River way west and is going to cut across the Texas Trail and rejoin the Jones and Plummer Trail to get to the shallowest spot on the Cimmaron.” Bat resisted arguing with them further and led the riders back onto the wide-open plains. “Kenedy’s caught in his own loop,” Charlie interjected. “That’s about all there is of him. He doesn’t have none of his old Daddy, that’s why he’ll run home to him.”

Bill brought up the rear of the posse, his mind on the pursuit, the lateness of the day, and Dora Hand. “Half the population (of Dodge) were gamblers or prostitutes…,” Bill wrote to his wife Zoe, in 1877. “The prostitutes were painted up like a present-day respectable woman and looked mighty pretty in their satins and laces.” Dora was among those “painted ladies” he found appealing drifting across the stage in her stylish fineries. There were some Dodge City residents who suggested she was a soiled dove, but female entertainers west of Independence, Missouri were often viewed as harlots by the general population.

To learn more about the death of Dora Hand and the posse that tracked her killer read

Thunder Over the Prairie.

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Ma Barker:  America’s Most Wanted Mother

In a time when notorious Depression-era criminals were terrorizing the country, the Barker-Karpis Gang stole more money than mobsters John Dillinger, Vern Miller, and Bonnie and Clyde combined. Five of the most wanted thieves, murderers, and kidnappers by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the 1930s were from the same family. Authorities believed the woman behind the band of violent hoodlums that ravaged the Midwest was their mother, Kate “Ma” Barker.

It was a raw, gusty day in mid-January 1934 when bank president Edward G. Bremer dropped off his nine-year-old daughter, Betty, at Summit School in St. Paul, Minnesota. Parents and children dressed in heavy overcoats and wearing woolen hats hurried across the street and passed in front of Edward’s black Lincoln sedan on their way to the building. A light snow began to fall as he pulled away from the elementary school and headed toward his office. Edward was the president of the Commercial State Bank and traveled the same route to work every day. Each morning he waved goodbye to his little girl at 8:25 and proceeded to his job. He traveled along Lexington Avenue for a half hour, stopping at all the traffic signs along the way.

The car Edward drove was comfortable and warm, and cheerful music spilled from the radio as he contemplated the paperwork waiting for him on his desk. He cast a glance in his rearview mirror every so often but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until Edward stopped at a stop sign and Alvin Karpis, a tall, slim man in a blue shirt streaked with mud, hurried to the driver’s side window holding a gun, that he considered anything was wrong. Edward was stunned and didn’t move as the armed man flung the driver’s side door open and shoved the weapon into his side. “Move over or I’ll kill you,” Alvin barked at him.

Before Edward had a chance to comply, the passenger’s side door of his car was jerked open, and Arthur “Doc” Barker leaned inside the vehicle. Arthur struck Edward on the head several times with the butt end of a .45 caliber automatic revolver. Blood from the gash sprayed the dashboard. Edward slumped in his seat, unconscious, and Alvin pushed him onto the floor. Arthur jumped inside the car and closed the passenger’s side door.

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