Expansion was the fever of the early nineteenth century, and women burned with it as surely as men, although in a different way. Subscribing to the "cult of true womanhood," which valued domesticity, piety, and similar "feminine" virtues, women championed expansion for the cause of civilization, even while largely avoiding the masculine world of politics. Adrienne Caughfield mines the diaries and letters of some ninety Texas women to uncover the ideas and enthusiasms they brought to the Western frontier. Although there were a few notable exceptions, most of them drew on their domestic skills and values to establish not only "civilization," but their own security. Caughfield sheds light on women's activism (the flip side of domesticity), attitudes toward race and "civilization," the tie between a vision of a unified continent and a cultivated wilderness, and republican values. She offers a new understanding of not only gender roles in the West but also the impulse for expansionism itself. In Texas, Caughfield demonstrates, "women never stopped arriving with more fuel for the flames [of expansionism] as their families tried to find a place to settle down, some place with a little more room, where national destiny and personal dreams merged into a glorious whole." In doing so, Texas women expanded not only American borders, but their own as well.

An expanded edition of one of the most original and provocative works of American history of the last decade, which documents the pioneering experiences and grit of American frontier women.

An Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People Using journal entries, letters home, and song lyrics, the women of the West speak for themselves in these tales of courage, enduring spirit, and adventure. Women such as Amelia Stewart Knight traveling on the Oregon Trail, homesteader Miriam Colt, entrepreneur Clara Brown, army wife Frances Grummond, actress Adah Isaacs Menken, naturalist Martha Maxwell, missionary Narcissa Whitman, and political activist Mary Lease are introduced to readers through their harrowing stories of journeying across the plains and mountains to unknown land. Recounting the impact pioneers had on those who were already living in the region as well as how they adapted to their new lives and the rugged, often dangerous landscape, this exploration also offers resources for further study and reveals how these influential women tamed the Wild West.

Details the lives of pioneers during the westward expansion of the early nineteenth century.

A riveting and previously untold history of the American West, as seen by the pioneering women who advocated for their rights amidst challenges of migration and settlement, and transformed the country in the process Between 1840 and 1910, hundreds of thousands of men and women traveled deep into the underdeveloped American West, lured by adventure, opportunity, and the spirit of Manifest Destiny. These settlers soon realized that survival in a new society required women to compromise eastern sensibilities and take on some of their husbands’ responsibilities. At a time when women had very few legal or economic--much less political--rights, these women soon proved just as essential as men to westward expansion. During the mid-nineteenth century, the traditional domestic model of womanhood shifted to include public service, with the women of the West becoming town mothers who established schools, churches, and philanthropies, while also coproviding for their families. They claimed their own homesteads and graduated from new, free coeducational colleges that provided career alternatives to marriage. In 1869, the men of the Wyoming Territory gave women the right to vote--partly to persuade more of them to move west--but with this victory in hand, western suffragists fought relentlessly until the rest of the region followed suit. By 1914 western women became the first American women to vote--a right still denied to women in every eastern state. In New Women in the Old West, Winifred Gallagher brings to life the riveting history of the little-known women--the White, Black, and Asian settlers, and the Native Americans and Hispanics they displaced--who played monumental roles in one of America's most transformative periods. Drawing on an extraordinary collection of research, Gallagher weaves together the striking legacy of the persistent individuals who not only created homes on weather-wracked prairies, but also played a vital, unrecognized role in the women's rights movement and forever redefined the "American woman."

Describes the causes, methods, people, and effects of the expansion of the original thirteen colonies to the West.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The story of Cynthia Ann Parker and the last days of the Comanche In 1836, when she was nine years old, Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanche Indians from her family's settlement. She grew up with them, mastered their ways, and married one of their leaders. Except for her brilliant blue eyes and golden mane, Cynthia Ann Parker was in every way a Comanche woman. They called her Naduah—Keeps Warm With Us. She rode a horse named Wind. This is her story, the story of a proud and innocent people whose lives pulsed with the very heartbeat of the land. It is the story of a way of life that is gone forever. It will thrill you, absorb you, touch your soul, and make you cry as you celebrate the beauty and mourn the end of the great Comanche nation.