wild women wednesday

Twenty-one-year-old Gertrude Simmons sat in a stiff-backed chair in her small room at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and stared out at the students hurrying to class.  The young men and women attending the institution were from Native American communities across the country.  None of them were wearing the traditional clothing of their...

The sound of children singing hymns filled the early morning sky above Natchez Winnemucca’s ranch just outside of Lovelock, Nevada.  The sun overhead was already a scorching ball of fire, and more than two dozen students took shelter from the ever-rising orb under a well-built, brush arbor.  A steady breeze like a hearth from a...

A half-dozen rosy-cheeked children, bundled in heavy coats and wearing woolen hats and gloves, tromped over the frozen ground toward the new schoolhouse in Laramie, Wyoming, on February 15, 1869.  Their teacher, thirty-six-year-old Eliza Stewart, happily greeted the pupils as they hurried into the building.  Their cold lips stretched into a smile as she ushered...

Among the many short news articles included in the October 5, 1886, edition of the Daily Tombstone was the announcement of a new teacher to the well-known Arizona town.  Miss Sarah Herring, her four siblings, and mother, Mary arrived in Tombstone in 1882 to join her father, mine owner and lawyer, Colonel William Herring.  Born...

The light from a spectacular full moon spilled into the windows of the parlor at the Strentzel Ranch near the town of Martinez in the Alhambra Valley in California.  The room was filled to overflowing with well-dressed guests, owners, and operators of farms in the area and their wives and family.  All eyes were on...

Yosemite’s Half Dome, the hooded monk in stone, brooding over its eastern end, rises thousands of feet from the ground below, so high that its summit is wreathed in clouds.  In October 1876, three men scaled the mountain face slowly working their way to the top.  All were dressed in woolen caps and trousers, thick...

Twenty-seven-year-old Clare Hodges gently urged her chestnut roan through a thicket of trees and brush.  The horse’s hooves barely made a sound as it walked over a thick carpet of pine needles and maple leaves.  Bright streams of sunlight filtered through the branches of sequoias and spilled onto the ground with brilliant intensity.  A light...

A hot July breeze skidded across the banks of the Green River south of Fort Bridger, Wyoming.  The clear water flowed swiftly past a grove of trees, waving with the wind.  The grass on both sides of the river was spangled with flowers. Elizabeth Graves, a handsome woman in her late 40s, was decorating a...