These are the Texas Dames, women who sallied forth to run sprawling ranches, build towns, helm major banks and shape Lone Star history. These "Dames" broke gender and racial barriers in every facet of life. Some led the way as heroines, while others slid headlong into notoriety, but nearly all exhibited similar strands of courage and determination to wrest a country, a state and a region from the wilds. From Angelina of the Hasinai, interpreter for the Spanish, and sharpshooter Sally Scull to Dr. Claudia Potter, America's first female anesthesiologist, and Birdie Harwood, first female mayor in the United States, historian Carmen Goldthwaite has been profiling Texas women and their accomplishments in her popular "Texas Dames" column. Here are their stories, from early Tejas to the twentieth century.

The author of Texas Dames shares a new collection of profiles featuring the incredible women who helped build the Lone Star State. Texas would not be Texas without the formidable women of its past. Beneath the sunbonnets and Stetsons, the women of the Lone Star State carved out ranches and breathed new life into arid spreads of land. When husbands, sons and fathers fell, bold Texas women were there to take the reins. Throughout the centuries, the women of Texas's ranches defended home and hearth with cannon and shot. They rescued hostages. They nurtured livestock through hard winters and long droughts and drove them up the cattle trails. They built communities and saw to it that faith and education prevailed for their children and their communities. Join author Carmen Goldthwaite in an inspiring survey of fierce Lone Star ladies.

"Historically, wars and revolutions have offered politically and socially disadvantaged people the opportunity to contribute to the nation (or cause) in exchange for future expanded rights. Although shorter than most conflicts, the Texas Revolution nonetheless profoundly affected not only the leaders and armies, but the survivors, especially women, who endured those tumultuous events and whose lives were altered by the accompanying political, social, and economic changes.

On July 4, 1796, a group of women gathered in York, Pennsylvania, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of American independence. They drank tea and toasted the Revolution, the Constitution, and, finally, the rights of women. This event would have been unheard of thirty years before, but a popular political culture developed after the war in which women were actively involved, despite the fact that they could not vote or hold political office. This newfound atmosphere not only provided women with opportunities to celebrate national occasions outside the home but also enabled them to conceive of possessing specific rights in the young republic and to demand those rights in very public ways. Susan Branson examines the avenues through which women's presence became central to the competition for control of the nation's political life and, despite attempts to quell the emerging power of women—typified by William Cobbett's derogatory label of politically active women as "these fiery Frenchified dames"—demonstrates that the social, political, and intellectual ideas regarding women in the post-Revolutionary era contributed to a more significant change in women's public lives than most historians have recognized. As an early capital of the United States, the leading publishing center, and the largest and most cosmopolitan city in America during the eighteenth century, Philadelphia exerted a considerable influence on national politics, society, and culture. It was in Philadelphia that the Federalists and Democratic Republicans first struggled for America's political future, with women's involvement critical to the outcome of their heated partisan debates. Middle and upper-class women of Philadelphia were able to achieve a greater share in the culture and politics of the new nation through several key developments, including theaters and salons that were revitalized following the war, allowing women to intermingle and participate in political discussions, and the wider availability of national and international writings, particularly those that described women's involvement in the French Revolution—perhaps the most important and controversial historical event in the early development of American women's political consciousness. Given these circumstances, Branson argues, American women were able to create new more active social and political roles for themselves that brought them out of the home and into the public sphere. Although excluded from the formal political arenas of voting and lawmaking, American women in the Age of Revolution nevertheless thought and acted politically and were able to make their presence and opinions known to the benefit of a young nation.