Journal Notes

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THE WIDOWED ONES:  BEYOND THE BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN

CHRIS ENSS and Howard Kazanjian with Chris Kortlander

“Once or twice in a lifetime comes a meticulously researched book that so radically changes your understanding of a historical event it is as though the scales fall from your eyes and you actually see what happened for the first time. The Widowed Ones, Beyond the Battle of the Little Bighorn is that book. Listen to the women’s side of the story. We promise you will never be the same.” — W. MICHAEL GEAR AND KATHLEEN O’NEAL GEAR, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHORS OF DISSOLUTION AND THE ICE ORPHAN

Seventh Cavalry officers’ wives who lost their spouses at the Battle of the Little Bighorn survived the ordeal because of the friendship they had with one another. No one else could understand their grief or help them get past the tremendous hurt. The Widowed Ones: Beyond the Battle of the Little Bighorn tells the stories of these women and the unique bond they shared.

Irish Central ran a story about the book Iron Women and my Irish heritage.

I was honored to be included in the publication.

Click on the link below to read the complete article.

The untold story of the women who helped build the US railroads

“Iron Women: The Ladies Who Helped Build The Railroad” by Chris Enss celebrates the women who influenced the first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s.

IrishCentral Staff

@IrishCentral

https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/new-book-women-helped-build-railroad

Enter now to win a copy of Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

Enter now to win a copy of

Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

While attending college in Pennsylvania, Mary Lawser was part of a group comprised of several accomplished female artists.  They were known as the Philadelphia Ten.

Among the members was a talented painter and sculptor named Mary Louise Lawser.  Like Mary Colter, Mary Lawser was hired by a major rail line company to help promote westward travel.

Born in 1906 in Pennsylvania, she exhibited at a young age.  She attended the Pennsylvania Museum School, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.  Mary’s work was exhibited in galleries in Europe and New York.  She was recognized by her peers as a gifted, bronze work artist.  After graduation she took a position as an art instructor at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and at Bryn Mawr.

In early 1940, she was hired to work for notable architect Paul Cret.  The French-born, Philadelphia architect and industrial designer was impressed with Mary’s design and execution of bronze tablets found inside Alexander Hamilton’s home, The Grange.  Commissioned by the American and Historic Preservation Society, the tablets were made to honor Alexander Hamilton, first secretary of the United States treasury.  In addition to designing buildings on the University of Texas campus and the Pan American Union Building in Washington, D.C., Paul Cret designed railroad cars for the Burlington and Santa Fe rail lines.  While Mary was employed by Cret, she contributed to decorating various railroad passenger cars with sculptures, wood carving, and mixed metal creations.

When Cret passed away in 1945, Mary was hired by another respected Pennsylvania architect, John Harbeson, to aid him in creating a new look for Burlington’s Pioneer Zephyr.  Although in the employ of Harbeson, Mary was singled out by the Budd Company, a railroad industry manufacturer, to design murals for the interior of the passenger cars that would inspire ticket-buyers to go west.

In 1948, Mary began work on a mural for the California Zephyr’s Silver Lariat.  The train was built as a dome coach, a series of cars that have glass domes on the top where passengers can ride and see in all directions around the train.  Mary painted a mural of the Pony Express in the large dining and lounge car.

Over the course of her five-year business relationship with the Budd Company, she created murals for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Denver and Rio Grande Western, and the Western Pacific Railroad.  Mary’s murals generally adorned the end walls of the dome coaches and they always depicted Western historical themes.  She also sculpted the appliques of apples and grapes which hung at each end of the dining cars as well as the lyre-based radio speakers.

Mary Lawser died in 1985 at the age of seventy-nine.

To learn more about Mary Lawser and the other ladies who helped build the railroad read

Iron Women

The Native Daughters of the Golden West presented me with the

California Image Award today. 

COVID delayed the ceremony. 

I’m grateful and honored. 

Enter now to win a copy of Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

“Iron Women provides a valuable addition to the history of the building of America’s railroads. Thoroughly researched and wonderfully illustrated, this book describes many unrecognized contributions by women to successes achieved across the iron horse empires. Not surprisingly, women who worked for the railroads had to overcome the traditional prejudices that plagued their struggles to prove their worth in most professions outside the home. From innovations made in telegraphy and engineering, to accomplishments in hospitality and entertainment, the efforts put forth by the featured females is that of frustration overcome by perseverance. This volume also contains interesting biographical vignettes of women who served as railroad presidents, travel journalists, artists, architects, and more. Chris Enss couples her smooth writing style with historical quotations to make an enjoyable read. I learned fascinating new things about the railroads and the women who worked on them.”

Roundup Magazine Review, Convention Edition by Author Robert Lee

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Always a pleasure to hear from readers! Thank you, John James.

Hello Chris, Thank you for all your writings. I have bought your books for my daughter (now 34) because they’re empowering. You are an American Treasure. I don’t need to tell anyone that there are many scenarios where women actually do ALL the work and receive little or no credit. I’m a member of several “fraternal” organizations (FOE, BPOE, LOOM) and I’ll reference one with which I’m most familiar l…. the FOE (Fraternal Order of Eagles). Some Eagle Aeries are integrated (men & women), ours isn’t. We have the general Aerie for men, and the Woman’s Auxiliary for women. Women do much or most of the work (like organizing and operating charity and other events) and men not only take the credit, they treat the women as if they’re considered and treated as lesser human beings. Not so much these days, but in the past, when I was new to the FOE, I was frequently told “This is a man’s club.” Ironically, the FOE professes 4 great pretexts (Liberty, Truth, Justice and EQUALITY). That’s a laugh.!! The FOE even (incredulously) claim that they originated “Mother’s Day” and “Social Security”. I was drawn to the group because I’m an advocate for the LTJE pretexts, but I remain with the group because I support charities …… and the drinks are cheap. Indeed, male-dominated structure is conspicuously illustrated throughout all aspects and areas of our society and throughout our HIS-tory.

Read Iron Women

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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.

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.

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.

The women selected to be members of the Harvey Car Courier Corps spent weeks training for their positions. 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, most 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

To learn more about the Harvey Girls read Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

Twenty-eight-year-old Elizabeth Cogley sat at a small desk in the Pennsylvania Railroad ticket office in Lewiston Junction, Pennsylvania, on April 16, 1861, frantically writing down the message coming through the telegraph. The smartly dressed woman wore a serious expression; the message she was transcribing was vital and history making. The day before, a similar wire had reached Elizabeth. She carefully noted its contents and passed it along to the ranking military official in the area. It was from President Abraham Lincoln, and it read, “I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress the wrongs already long enough endured.”  This was Lincoln’s first call for troops. He asked for 75,000 volunteers.

The following day, Pennsylvania’s first war governor, Andrew G. Curtin, sent a telegram to Captain Selheimer, commander of the First Defenders Association in Lewiston, to rally his men together to report to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as soon as possible. After delivering the message to the captain, Elizabeth was instructed to respond to Governor Curtin with news that he and his troops would “move at once.”  The railroad telegrapher dispatched the essential information quickly and accurately. Little did Elizabeth know the event would be remembered as the first telegraph exchange of the Civil War.

Born on November 24, 1833, Elizabeth learned telegraphy in the office of the National Telegraph Company. She entered the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company on April 13, 1856. She was stationed in the Lewiston office until the beginning of the Civil War. She remained with the railroad company for more than forty years.

Some of the earliest women in railroading can be found in telegraph stations. The job of the telegrapher was to transfer information between the train dispatcher and the train operator. A telegrapher copied train orders and messages from the train crew and reported the passing trains to the dispatcher. They also received and sent Western Union telegrams. Most learned the trade from another operator. Some attended schools such as the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York and the Pittsburgh Female College in Pittsburgh.

The qualifications needed to be a telegrapher were to be well read, to know how to spell, and to be able to learn Morse code. According to author Virginia Penney’s book written in 1870 entitled How Women Can Make Money, a good lady telegraphist could make between $300 and $500 a year. With that in mind, many women with some knowledge of electricity and good penmanship decided to pursue a career in the field.

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

Good news for Iron Women!

Amazon ranks the little book that could #8 in E-Books and

#12 in Railroad History for the print version. 

Enter now to win a copy of Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

Iron Women: The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad has been recognized with a

Spur Finalist Award from Western Writers of American and

two finalist awards from Foreword Review magazine. 

This month enter to win a copy of Iron Women when you visit www.chrisenss.com.