Youre watching American History tv. Let me tell you about our speaker tonight. Wynn fellowed gallaghers books include how the post office created america, just the way you are a New York Times notable book, working on god, the power of place and new, understanding our need for novelty and change. She has written for numerous publications such as the atlantic monthly, Rolling Stone and the New York Times. If her newest book, new women in the old west from settlers to suffragists, an untold american story, is available for purchase from politics and prose. If you use the link in the chat box which is also available on our web site, youll be able to purchase the book with a 10 is discount 10 discount. Just be sure to use the code special 10 when checking out. Now, please join me in welcoming to the smithsonian Winifred Gallagher. Hi, wynn fellowed. Hi, kathy. Thanks so much, its wonderful to be with you. Before i begin, aye like to see a few id like to say a few words about the woman you see on your screen from north dakota. She was a Norwegian Immigrant who spoke no english at all when she arrived in the u. S. , but she filed her homestead claim, lived on it for five years, then sold it for a nice profit which she used to start out in a new career as a photographer with her own studio. Like the other women well talk about tonight, she made the most of the unusual opportunities that the American West afforded to new women. Id like to explain also that well pick up with slides later in my talk partly because the women, because women in general particularly the ones that im going to talk about were not much photographed until the womens Rights Movement really picked up later in the 19th century. If i began thinking about new women in the old west during my 12 years of living half time in rural wyoming. I was impressed by the strong, versatile women starting with the 80yearold mayor who pretty much ran local affairs from government to business, and thats not even counting the actual cowgirls. Was there something in the water . I did some research and found that my friends were carrying on a long tradition of independent, competent and civicmindedness. It began in the old west era of the 1840s into the early 19th into the early 20 century when more than half of america was settled. But historians failed to notice, however, that women busy building homes and communities from scratch not only joined, but at a crucial moment led the massive human rights revolution that enfranchised half the nation. Indeed, by the time the 19th amendment was finally ratified in 1920, most western women had already votedded for years, sometimes for decades before their sisters in a single state back east. The colonization of the west and the Suffrage Movement were overlapping epochs, and three generations of women were critical to both. Yet their doublebarreled achievements have simply been neglected. According to or the foundational myth, strong silent men won the west. In fact, women were equal ily are essential equally essential to the process. Moreover, they were not just stereotypical martyrish or quakers with hearts of gold who supported men in various ways, but single homesteaders and doctors, entrepreneurs and suffragists. In their experimental, improvised Settler Society, these hard working, determined women found unique opportunities; social, political, economic to become more equal to men by acting more as equals. All of these white, black and asian women were new to the west, but some of them and some of the native american Hispanic Women they displaced also came to per sonify what was called the new woman. These new women rejected the 19th century selfsacrificing domesticity and anticipated the early 20th century, more liberate model of womanhood based on the kind of independent, fulfilling way of life traditionally limited to men. Officiating womens experience in the west requires understanding something about their position in larger American Society which was terrible. By ageold law and custom the, they were citizens in name only. They had no official place in civic life and very few legal rights. According to americas version of English Common law, a married woman a wife became a [inaudible] who was covered by or officially absorbed into her husbands person. In exchange for his support and protection, she was legally obliged to serve and obey him. She could not own, inherit, control property including her own she could not sue in court, run a business, divorce or even claim custody of her own children. The connection between womens lack of economic status and lack of rights was highlighted in america just after the revolutionary war. While the men fought, many women including abigail adams, the future first lady capably ran their families farms and enterprises. In recognition of their service and patriotism, new york, new jersey, massachusetts and New Hampshire allowed them to vote. Then the men returned from the war. By the time of the constitutions ratification in 1788, most women had been disenfranchised. New jersey held on until 1807. By the mid 19th century as the Industrial Revolution rapidly gathered steam and rapidly urbanized america, womens status declined still further, at least those of the middle and upper classes in towns and cities. In the old agrarian economy, home and work were intermeshed on farms where the labor of both sexes sustained the family. Especially in the booming urban areas, mens jobs in the new factories and offices now supported their wives and children. Eager to codify this huge shift, Victorian Society confined the sexes to what were routinely called desperate spheres separate spheres. Men got the public world of the home excuse me, men got the public world of industry and commerce, law and politics, women got the private world of the home. They continued to do housework and childcare, but they lost the status of economic coproviders for their families. Their only acceptable career was marriage. Indeed, they could compromise their respectable reputations simply by seeking a mans education, in quotes, much less a profession. Just as westward migration began, however, social reformers started to renovate this cloisteredded victorian home, turning it into womens new power center. They built upon a theory involving since the 18th evolving since the 18th century that women were not so much inferior from went as different from them. They were weaker, of course, but also elevated, nurturing. In a treatise on domestic economy which quickly became a secular bible on how respectable people should live, Katherine Beecher a champion of female education and a mother of Home Economics puppet the home and the home put the home and the homemaker at the very center of americas rapidly changing society and its westward expansion. Women were [inaudible] she insisted, but the rightful arbiters of mores, manners, child rearing, religion, charity, important matters previously adjudicated by men. Indeed, beecher went so far as to proclaim that what was later termed womens moral authority, perhaps even superiority, created a balance of power. She said it has been america alone that women it is in america alone that women are raised to an equality with the other sex. That was a pretty radical thing to say back in 1841. This glorification of their domestic role endowed women with a potent religious and social gravitas that elevated their social standing. It also provideed a platform for launching their campaign for further empowerment. Theres a certain irony there that women turned on this which was keeping them down at a certain level. They turned it into an advantage and used it to go from home to world. Enslaved women who had to work could not emulate this new genteel model. Others, whether agrarian wives, bohemians or the first female teachers and nurses [inaudible] if at all, but the aspirational ideals of the domestic american madonna, the sentimental religious Victorian Society and my greated to the west. Migrated to the west. Most 19th century americans, including beecher, considered politics too base a pursuit for women but not all. In july 1848 as migration increased, Katie Stanton elizabeth Katie Stanton, who we see here in all of her mag magnificence [laughter] and lucretia mott, both abolitionists, famously held a meeting in seneca falls, new york, to discuss what were first called woman rights. The event was later promoted as the birth place of suffrage, the right to vote in National Mobile elections, sit on jury, run for office. But seneca falls really only helped to formalize and publicize a cause amid e the ferocious battle to abolish slavery. By the 1830s black abolitionists soon personified by Sojourner Truth upheld universal suffrage or the right to vote regardless of race, sex or creed. They inspired white women abolitionists to rebel against their own second class status which was based on gender instead of race. Stanton and mott were well aware that in their own upstate community the native women of the Iroquois Confederation had long owned property, divorced and elected leaders. After two days, stantoning wrote a declaration of rights and sentiments that elegantly rephrased thomas jefferson. All men and women are created equal. Two little words. Despite the lofty language, the activists first role were distinctly practical and domestic. They prioritized the rights to control property, divorce and maintain child custody, laws that would help protect their families from improvident or abusive husbands. Even these zealots considered suffrage so farfetched that they included it in their declaration only after black abolitionist Frederick Douglass last minute argument. In mainstream society, however, the woman rights proclaimed at seneca falls including equal education and employment were considered so ludicrous that newspapers the idea simply by printing a list of womens rights. In that same year of 1848, change roiled the west. That vast territory stretching past the mississippi river. Gold was discovered in california, the u. S. Annexed the vast oregon territory and also claimed what is now our enormous southwest as spoils from the mexicanamerican war. The rush to the new frontier began in earnest. The west differed from the rest of america in significant ways that affected womens positions starting with demography. Until the turn of the century, white men significantly outnumbered white women there, particularly in towns and cities. And womens scarcity increased their value. Overall supply and demand. So far less popular [inaudible] the west was also home to the great majority of the countrys native american, hispanics and asians which conditioned the white anglosaxon, protestant women who dominated at least early migration to be cast as maternal civilizers among savages in an alleged wilderness. Indeed, the west quickly became a hoe case for the vir showcase for the virtuous homemaker in her snug cabin. She was not only the moral heroine of beechers society, but also of americas transcontinental expansion. Womens status also benefited from conditions in the wests Settler Society which by definition was simpler and more interested in progress than in tradition. It was all hands on deck. Even was needed to do whatever needed doing, and people just didnt pay too much attention the these victorian ideas about womens work and mens work. In the west, as in most of america today, it took two industrious partners to support a family which increased the value of womens work. No man wanted to homestead without a wife to do all the Domestic Work and also, importantly, earn money from there her home production whether selling eggs or bread or taking in sewing or boarders. By the time the pioneers got to the west, they were often very cash poor. Even if they wanted to hire help, there was really no help to be had, so this gave women a lot of opportunities. And the cash that they made really for the first couple years often supported their families. Not surprisingly, agrarian women had their suitors. Not enough of women, too many men, women were able to be picky. In mining towns they used their domestic skills to market hot meals and clean laundry to the overwhelmingly male population. The pioneer woman of song and story may be the proper, bonn especiallied why have bonn innocented wife in her homestead, but women like [inaudible] have an equally valid claim to the title. In 1849 after barely surviving an especially taxing migration from missouri, she and her family arrived in the gold rush town of sacramento tattered and penniless. She was one of 3 women among 6,000 men. One morning a miner offered her 5 for a hot breakfast. Thats 5 for a hot breakfast. Thats about 168 today. And she noted that he would have paid her 10 if she had asked for it. He soon bought her first she soon bought her first boarding house and prospered in the Hospitality Industry at a time when few women ran businesses elsewhere. The final hotel that she called wilss hotel, the previous one burned down, so she loaded her cook stove in the wagon and took her kids, and they stopped at a nice spot, and they got some hay bills and she hay bales, and she hung up a sign, and her first guest slept on the other side of the hay bales. She was a very good cook. The west Settlers Society was also free of an entrenched, highbrowed establishment determined to keep women in their place. Building new communities required every pair of hands, and the town mothers who organized many of the first schools, churches and charities greatly enhanced womens position in public life. One of the things that really annoyed me when i was doing research on the book was that because women didnt have the legal right to start an institution, to found corporations, the women would do all the work at the school or the hospital, and then their husbands would appear in the newspaper that it was his school, his hospital, and he got the credit for being the town father instead of the town mother. During sarah royces first years in gold rush california, she held Church Services in her familys tent. This went on for more than five years, i believe. When they finally settled in grants valley, california, in 1854, the teacher turned her modest onestory house into a school. Her only resources was a book she had found in an abandoned wagon, a bible, a volume of milton, some fables. Her home schooled son became a famous harvard philosopher. And her daughterinlaw, as her daughterinlaw later put it, quote, wherever she was, she made civilization even when it seemed that she add had very little, indeed, from which to make it. Kind of a great quote that applies to a lot of these women that were talking about tonight. When she a arrived in central city, colorado, myra rah brown, a black freed woman, worked as a washer woman until she could start her own laundry. As her business expanded, she. Ruledly invested shh rudely invested in mines and became a philanthropist. She helped the needy of all races and other freed people to my great to colorado to migrate to colorado. At the age of 82 after years of searching for the four children who had been sold away during slavery, she finally found her daughter eliza jane. The local paper marked to case, describing brown as still strong, vigorous, tall, her hair thickly streaked with gray, her face kind. Women like wilson, royce and brown were not considered equal to men, but they had narrowed that gap. Their record of hard work and dedication won respect and made them a political force; albeit not electoral to be reckoned with. During the civil war, small but influential groups of western women began to capitalize on two unique opportunities to get ahead. In the process, they wld also be treated as equals by the federal government, a very important legal precedent. In 1862 as the civil war raged, president lincoln and his more genderegalitarian republicans passed two Ground Breaking laws that recognized womens importance to the greater reconstruction. We have far too narrow an idea of the reconstruction. It actually lasted from we have our too narrow an idea area of the reconstructed. It lasted 1845 to 1877 and it was meant to create a coasttocoast nation that had never existed before. Most of america on the east coast and the south, there gold was discovered in california and there was a lot of nothing in the middle. The greater reconstruction created this new transcontinental country by not just reunifying the south after the war but by colonizing the west so if you wanted to study an interesting period of American History i think the greater reconstruction of 45 to 77 is worth more attention than it gets. A lot of stuff is going on. In what is more than half of america, people forget the west is more than half of america. It doesnt get the same press because it is considered flyover country but history is phenomenally interesting. Anyway. In 1862 Congress Passed the homestead act which enabled female as well as male heads of household to claim 160 acres of free land in the west at a time when most women had few Economic Opportunities at all the chance to own real estate that could support an independent life to sell later for sizable profit was a stunning advance. Bear in mind women of ample means or wealthier women, the only thing they were allowed to have was marriage. If no one would marry them they had 2 more or less live as an unpaid servant for one of their male relatives, nannies to their brothers children autocare of grandpa in his old age. If you were a poor woman the only opportunities you had were domestic service. The idea that a woman could own her own property and support herself on her own land was a pretty phenomenal advance. Women especially didnt have the opportunity to accumulate capital. The idea that you could own this land a