When reading the histories of women in the pioneer days, particularly where I’m from in Nebraska, you don’t get all the “dope” so to speak, unless and until you dig a bit deeper into things.

Its interesting to go through the bios of the earlier pioneer women, but until you actively add up everything that you’ve got in their bio’s, you don’t have a full picture of their life, and the things they went through.

Women of the early pioneer era are mentioned only as mothers, wives or something along t hose lines, not as the pioneers, the actual strong women that they were who gave the heart to the Heartland of the United States.


The men who purportedly tamed this country are those upon whom the vast majority of the biographies are concentrated, and the women, who dealt on a day to day level with the hardships and the pain, the loneliness, who scratched out a living from the land and gave birth, often miles from any kind of help, are touched on in passing.
Examples are given on Ancestry.com, which include

“Our subject [Maj. S.K. Cramer] was married to Miss Hulda [sic] Frantz, March 22, 1843. She was born in Alleghany County, Md., March 23, 1823 and was the daughter of John and Catherine Frantz. Of this union nine children were born…Mrs. Huldah Cramer remained the faithful and loving wife of our subject until called to that better home, July 31, 1878.”

We tend to agree, that there has to be a lot more to the wife and mother than just that. Think about your own mother and what she went through. My grandmother, whose bio for her obit reads, Mary ____ wife and mother, married 1906 to F.W __ mother of… etc etc

Mary was a wife in the great depression, and had twelve children spanning forty years. Married at 16 and a mother at 17, she ran a line camp for loggers, feeding them, caring for their needs while caring for more than 6 children at the same time in an old and very poor mountainous are of West Virginia. She lived on the top of a mountain, burnt coal to keep warm, fed her kids from baking she did on a wood stove in the kitchen, baking her bread in the same way. Electricity was not run to her high mountain top home until the mid fifties. Can you imagine raising twelve children in those conditions? Yet I never saw her home less than spotless and never tasted food so good as she cooked.

Surely she deserves more than a three line bio?

Your own parents and grandparents have a story to tell.When you read their bios, go a step further and really think about what they went through. Add up the information in the bio’s that you read about our wonderful and stalwart pioneer women from all areas, and really take into consideration what they went through this Mothers Day.

And then… call your mother.