Woman on the American Frontier

Mrs. Davies was accustomed to handle a gun and was a good shot, like many other women on the frontier. She contemplated as a last resort that, if not rescued in the course of the day, when night came and the Indians had fallen asleep, she would deliver herself and her children by killing as many of the Indians as she could, believing that in a night attack the rest would fly panic-stricken. -from "Chapter IX: Some Remarkable Women" Reading like the most rousing, rollicking fiction, this is, in the words of its author, "a valuable and authentic history of the heroism, adventures, privations, captivities, trials, and noble lives and deaths of the pioneer mothers of the republic." Drawing on firsthand sources, including the diaries of the women portrayed, and illustrated with gorgeous line drawings, this compulsively readable 1878 work documents the role of daring women in the settling of America, from Mrs. Hannah Nash and her daughter Deborah, who in the 17th-century rescued all their worldly possessions from a devastating flood, to Miss M., who in the 19th century established a schoolhouse on the Illinois prairie. Young women and old, mothers and daughters and wives and widows, outwitting wildlife, battling Indians, building homes and towns, enduring famine and ensuring bounty, the hundreds of women portrayed here are the "unnamed heroes" of American history. American writer WILLIAM WORTHINGTON FOWLER (1833-1881) enjoyed diverse careers as a lawyer, stockbroker, politician, and journalist. He also wrote Ten Years in Wall Street (1870).