I was glad to see Rebecca’s post on my new book, More than a Farmer’s Wife: Voices of American Farm Women, 1910 to 1960. I especially appreciated that it resonated so deeply with her and her experiences as a farmer’s granddaughter.
I wanted, with this post, to sort of reflect on how the book came about and why I wanted to write it.
First, there was my Grandma Elsie, whom I’ve written about before.
Second, there was Laura.
I read Little House in the Ozarks when it came out, and I used it as the base for a community education class back before I went to grad school. The course was about the “real” Laura; even then, I was considered a local expert on the subject, a journalist who knew her history.
Fast forward.
I was in the first year of my doctoral program, several years later, when the assignment to write an original research paper using qualitative research methods reignited my interest in the articles Laura wrote for the Missouri Ruralist that were republished in Ozarks. Grandma Elsie had just passed away, the spring before, and I found myself in a time of reflection about that part of our American past. Concurrently, I was working on a paper about American culture as shaped and reflected in the music of rural and country women. I found a lot of overlap, and I proposed a paper examining Laura’s Ruralist articles to determine what farm women were thinking about during the fifteen years she wrote for that publication. How did they view their worlds? What were their issues and concerns?
Laura’s writing was the first example I could think of. At the time, I felt a little at sea as to where I could find other farm women’s writing; that would change over time. But Laura’s work was the first big step.
Of course, I later found out that the pieces in the Ozarks text had been cut and edited, and when I updated that research for the book, I used the originals, first as reproduced in Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist, and second, from a stack of photocopies given me by my editor at the University of Missouri Press.
What I found from Laura’s work? She was clearly concerned about education for farm folk, the status of women in the larger community, and the health of the farming business. In reading this material with fresh eyes, I was also struck by her entrepreneurial streak; clearly, she wrote in part to make money. This first reading whet my appetite to find out more–but where could I do that? How could I find other farm women?
The next semester, I conducted another research project, this one to ask the same questions of content in the St. Paul Pioneer Press for the same period. Guess what I found?
Nothing.
There were exactly two specific mentions of farm women in the issues of that newspaper–an Upper Midwestern newspaper that targeted a rural populace, one that featured farming in its pages regularly–and I was disappointed.
Except for one thing: a note from the editor of a publication called The Farmer’s Wife, based in St. Paul, expressing gratitude for new “rest-rooms” for farmer’s wives at the Minnesota State Fair.
What did I learn? Mainstream press did not discuss farm women, even as early as 1910.
And there was a place I might find other farm women’s voices.
I found them. The University of Minnesota holds a complete archive of The Farmer’s Wife. I just had to know what to look for–and where to find it.
And it began.
(Next week: Part II)