Letters of a Woman Homesteader

The writer of the following letters is a young woman who lost her husband in a railroad accident and went to Denver to seek support for herself and her two-year-old daughter Jerrine. Turning her hand to the nearest work she went out by the day as house-cleaner and laundress. Later seeking to better herself she accepted employment as a housekeeper for a well-to-do Scotch cattle-man Mr. Stewart who had taken up a quarter-section in Wyoming. The letters written through several years to a former employer in Denver tell the story of her new life in the new country.Dear Mrs. Coney -Are you thinking I am lost like the Babes in the Wood? Well I am not and Im sure the robins would have the time of their lives getting leaves to cover me out here. I am way up close to the Forest Reserve of Utah within half a mile of the line sixty miles from the railroad. I was twenty-four hours on the train and two days on the stage and oh those two days! The snow was just beginning to melt and the mud was about the worst I ever heard of.(...)- Taken from Letters of a Woman Homesteader written by Elinore Pruitt Stewart