Faith and Perseverance

<p>Before she was the stern but steady Miss Wilder in <em>Little Town on the Prairie</em> Eliza Jane Wilder was a real woman who lived an extraordinary life of courage conviction and change.</p><p>Born in 1850 near Burke New York Eliza grew up in a family that believed in hard work and education. She began teaching at just nineteen guiding students in one-room schoolhouses from New York to Minnesota and eventually across the windswept plains of Dakota Territory where she became De Smet's first teacher.</p><p>But Eliza's story did not end on the prairie. After claiming and patenting her own homestead; a rare achievement for a woman of her time she worked in Washington D.C. supported women's rights and later built a new life in Louisiana where she married raised a son and weathered devastating personal loss with quiet strength.</p><p>Her long life stretched from the age of lanterns and sod houses to the dawn of radio and automobiles. Through it all Eliza remained true to her purpose: to teach to endure and to build something lasting wherever she went.</p><p>Told with rich historical detail and drawn from letters records and family accounts <em>Eliza Jane Wilder Thayer: A Life Between Frontiers</em> reveals the untold story of a woman who helped shape both her family's legacy and the American frontier itself.</p>