New Women in the Old West: From Settlers to Suffragists, an Untold American Story

Name: New Women in the Old West: From Settlers to Suffragists, an Untold American Story
Price: 15.30 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Winifred Gallagher
ISBN: 9780735223257

Between 1840 and 1910, hundreds of thousands of men and women traveled deep into the underdeveloped American West, lured by the prospect of adventure and opportunity, and galvanized by the spirit of Manifest Destiny. Alongside this rapid expansion of the United States, a second, overlapping social shift was taking place: survival in a settler society busy building itself from scratch required two equally hardworking partners, compelling women to compromise eastern sensibilities and take on some of the same responsibilities as their husbands. At a time when women had very few legal or economic — much less political — rights, these women soon proved they were just as essential as men to westward expansion. Their efforts to attain equality by acting as men's equals paid off, and well before the Nineteenth Amendment, they became the first American women to vote.

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. Like western history in general, the record of women's crucial place at the intersection of settlement and suffrage has long been overlooked. 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 and built communities in muddy mining camps, but also played a vital, unrecognized role in the women's rights movement and forever redefined the "American woman."