Relevant History welcomes historical mystery author Ann Parker, whose award-winning Silver Rush mystery series, published by Poisoned Pen Press, features saloon-owner Inez Stannert in the 1880s silver boomtown of Leadville, Colorado. Ann's ancestors include a Leadville blacksmith, a Colorado School of Mines professor, and a gandy dancer. Ann and her family live in the San Francisco Bay Area (although she'd really really love to move to Colorado), where she slings scientific and corporate verbiage by day to pay the bills and writes historical mysteries at night to satisfy her soul. For more information, check her web site, author blog, and group blog (on alternate Thursdays), and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
*****
"Go West, young man, go West!"
Such was the statement theoretically made by men such as Horace Greeley and John Soule. "The West," the location of which was ever on the move as civilization marched in the direction of the setting sun, was the place where restless, adventurous, and ambitious men could theoretically make their mark.
But what about restless, adventurous, and ambitious women?
As it happens, many of them went West as well.
The West, it was believed, was full of opportunity to those who were willing to apply a little elbow grease and who were lucky. Being in the right place at the right time was as much a factor then as now.
Women—with and without men—flocked to the West to make a future, build new lives, and (I'd be lying to say otherwise) sometimes to find a mate.
Leadville, Colorado, the main location for my Silver Rush historical mystery series, is a case in point. Leadville is located at the 10,000-foot mark in the Rocky Mountains, where winter lasts nine months out of the year. But that didn't stop people from coming to make their fortunes, starting with a mini-gold rush in 1860 and progressing to a very impressive silver rush in the late 1870s.
One of the first adventurous women to set down stakes in this area was Augusta Tabor, who came west in 1860 with her husband Horace Tabor and their tiny son Maxcy. The Tabors headed up to the remote California Gulch in what was to become Leadville, looking to get rich. The Tabors weren't alone. The area was crawling with prospectors hoping to make a fortune. To most, this meant a life of moving from claim to claim, chasing the glitter of precious metals. But others saw the business opportunity in the region. One of those discerning folks was Augusta. According to Edward Blair's book, Leadville: Colorado's Magic City, "She quickly set up her baking business and in addition served meals. She found that some men 'did not like men's cooking and would insist upon boarding where there was a woman.'"
As Leadville developed, more women arrived of the proper and not-so-proper sorts. The latter included women with appellations such as Red Stockings, Sallie Purple, Mollie May, and Winnie Purdy. At the other end of the virtue spectrum were the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, who established the first hospital in Leadville in1879. Both the sisters of the red-light district and the Sisters of Charity received a fair bit of press as to their activities—the good, the bad, and the ugly, as you might imagine.
But what about the rest? What were they up to?
When trying to get a grip on the lives of women during this timeframe, the newspapers are one source. There are miles of column inches written about who attended what soirees, what they wore, and the music they danced to and what they ate. But there are also letters, diaries, and journals. One of my all-time favorites in this genre is A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote. Mary Hallock Foote was a writer, an artist, a mother, and the wife of a mining engineer. Her writings and drawings serve up many details of the life of a proper woman in the wilder parts of the West in the late 1800s.
The 1880 census is also a gold (or perhaps that should be silver) mine of information as to the occupations of women in the silver-mining boomtown. Besides the Sisters of Charity (13 in all) and prostitutes (52 owned up to that profession to the census takers), there were actresses and dance hall employees (at 53, they outnumbered the prostitutes by one), domestic servants (185), laundresses (130), teachers (15), restaurant keepers and cooks (55), and dressmakers and milliners (76). What I always find interesting in analyzing a census are those professions where just a few women hold forth "in a man's world." For 1880, such professions in Leadville included journalist (1 woman/30 men), saloonkeeper/bartender (3 women/228 men), miners (4 women/3,204 men), physician/surgeon (4 women/69 men), and (and hostler/teamster (1 woman/255 men). To me, "the numbers tell the tale." Women looking for opportunity could find it, but they were tough and determined.
Life was not easy in those days and in those places. The law was hard put-upon to keep the lawless element in hand, and sometimes the citizens—including the women—took matters into their own hands. For instance, a local postmaster in the Leadville area, A.R. Brown, told the following tale concerning two proper Leadville matrons, Mrs. Bradt and Mrs. Updegraff. The women were passing two city lots recently purchased for building a school and noticed that one of the school lots had been jumped and the trespasser had put up a shanty on the grounds. (In 1879, real estate speculation was rife downtown, and prime lots were regularly being "jumped" by scoundrels who would simply move in and take over the lots at gunpoint.) According to Brown, Mrs. Bradt's and Mrs. Updegraff 's "western fiery spirits of justice to schools and school property led them to take the law into their own hands," resulting in their tearing down the lot-jumper's shanty and calmly walking away.
Now that's the spirit that won The West!
*****
A big thanks to Ann Parker. She'll give away one copy of her latest release, Mercury's Rise, to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I'll choose the winner from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. International delivery is available.
*****
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne's free newsletter.
You always write the most interesting posts about your world and its sources. I may have to start reading some of the sources as well as your excellent books!
Posted by: Sandra | 24 January 2012 at 08:33 AM
Welcome back, Sandra. I bet you get a kick out of reading Ann's sources. That's why so many authors of historical fiction include sources in a bibliography at the end of their books.
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 24 January 2012 at 08:37 AM
Hi Sandra! Many times the source material just pulls me in and it's a sheer effort of will to direct my attention back to writing. :-) I'm sure Suzanne has the same challenge...
Posted by: Ann Parker | 24 January 2012 at 12:30 PM
Fun series and nice post.
Posted by: Liz | 24 January 2012 at 01:13 PM
From what I've read over the years, the West was a place where free spirits of both sexes were able to better indulge their dreams and aspirations for a few years before the stultifying influence of Victorian ideas of civilization eventually followed. I think of women like Calamity Jane, Belle Starr, and Charlie Parkhurst(the woman who dressed as a man and worked as a stagecoach driver for years and whose sex was not discovered until her body was being prepared for burial). Because of women like these and many others, it's no surprise that women first gained the vote out west.
With Leadville, in particular, I am reminded of (the Unsinkable) Molly Brown of Titanic fame and am not surprised that she came from such a place.
This book sounds like a real page turner and I'd love to read it.
Posted by: Tracy Smith | 24 January 2012 at 01:45 PM
I second what Ann says. Research is definitely seductive!
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 24 January 2012 at 02:00 PM
Nice to see you on my blog again, Liz. Have you read all three books in the series that come before Mercury's Rise?
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 24 January 2012 at 02:02 PM
Hello Tracy! Thanks for stopping by my blog again. The West was also one place where psychopaths gravitated if they were smart enough to realize that they weren't going to fit in back east, they weren't imprisoned, and they had the financial means to scram. And I've heard/read so many stories like that of Charlie Parkhurst -- in other time periods, too. What's the message here? :-)
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 24 January 2012 at 02:10 PM
Another source of information about women in the west is the diaries that many of them kept. One of my favorites is the daily of a Nebraska teenager who was one of the few unmarried women in the territory. she wrote about men traveling long distances and proposing the first time they met her.
Posted by: Warren Bull | 24 January 2012 at 04:05 PM
All in one breath: "Pleased to meet you, miss. Will you marry me?"
Warren, that's hilarious. Thanks!
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 24 January 2012 at 05:37 PM
Ann, Your analysis of the census was revealing of Leadville's populace and has me thinking of applying the same to areas of Arizona. Thanks for an "as usual" insightful piece.
Posted by: Arletta Dawdy | 24 January 2012 at 06:07 PM
Suzanne, Have read Silver Lies and have the rest on my TBR list, having read with interest Ann's posts on her blog tour. Should have been more precise.
Posted by: Liz | 24 January 2012 at 09:29 PM
Terrific information! Thanks so much for posting. Makes me want to do some reading and research of my own.
Joanie
Posted by: Joan Rhine | 25 January 2012 at 12:24 PM
Arletta, thanks for visiting my blog -- and it looks like you found Women Writing the West.
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 25 January 2012 at 02:28 PM
Ann, are the titles of your Inez Stannert series stand-alone, or is it better to read them in order?
And please list them in order for visitors.
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 25 January 2012 at 02:30 PM
Welcome to my blog, Joanie. If you enjoy reading fiction set during other historical periods too, click on the "Relevant History" category in the right sidebar, and you'll see a year's worth of essays written by author guests who write historical fiction. And more are lined up, so stay tuned!
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 25 January 2012 at 02:34 PM
Hello all! Oh my goodness, work takes over for a couple of days and you all come and visit Suzanne's lovely blog. I feel like I'm walking into the middle of a party that's been going on a while. :-}
Hello Liz! Good to see you again!
Hello Tracy -- You've named some of the indomitable women of the West! I'm reading a Willa Award winning novel about Charley Parkhurst right now (it's my "car book," and travels with me so I have something to read in traffic and so on).
Hello Warren -- You're right! I forgot to mention diaries, which are right up there with letters for fascinating information.
Hello Arletta! -- I think censuses are marvelous documents for "reading between the lines." For instance, one set of great-grandparents lived apart: My great-grandmother claimed in the census that she was still married (lived with her young son); great-grandfather said he was divorced (and lived in a boarding house). Hmmm.
Hello Joanie! -- If you're inspired to go research and write, I believe I've done my job! :-)
Posted by: Ann Parker | 26 January 2012 at 02:51 AM
Hello Suzanne,
And thank you so much for hosting me on Relevant History this week. :-) As for the series, I try hard to write each so that they stand alone (one never knows where a reader might start), but there are certain relationships that develop as the series progresses, so starting from the beginning is always good. The books are, from first to most recent:
SILVER LIES
IRON TIES
LEADEN SKIES
MERCURY'S RISE
Library Journal said in its review that MERCURY'S RISE was a good "jumping on" point for someone who was looking to enter the series at a later point.
For book #5, I do think I've plumb run out of rhyming titles, though... ;-)
Posted by: Ann Parker | 26 January 2012 at 02:54 AM
Thanks for checking back in with us, Ann. Re: your great-grandparents' differing claims of their marriage status, I suspect that back then, the stigma of divorce hit women much harder than it did men, prompting your g-grandmother to keep mum. In truth, they may only have been separated, since divorce still wasn't a "quickie" process in the first half of the 20th century.
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 26 January 2012 at 06:29 AM
I just discovered that my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, has set eBook prices for the first in my series, SILVER LIES, at 99 cents! So, if folks have eBook readers, this is a really really inexpensive time to download the book and give the series a try...
amazon Kindle link: http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Lies-Rush-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0015A67BK
eBook and Mobi link: http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/silver-lies/
Posted by: Ann Parker | 26 January 2012 at 09:24 PM
Great news. Thanks for posting the links.
Posted by: Suzanne Adair | 27 January 2012 at 06:16 AM