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Letters of a Woman Homesteader
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Letters of a Woman Homesteader
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Letters of a Woman Homesteader
Audiobook4 hours

Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Written by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Narrated by Kate Fleming

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

After losing her husband, Elinore Pruitt washed clothes in Denver to support herself and her daughter. In 1909 she took a job working for a rancher near Burnt Fork, Wyoming. Subsequently she filed her own claim and married the rancher. The letters she wrote to her former employer over several years are packed with delightful stories and fascinating observations about her new life.

In this audiobook, Kate Fleming, a gifted, award-winning, narrator, gives a marvelous performance, taking us back to Burnt Fork and a very rich slice of America's past.

Elinore Pruitt Stewart was born at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1876. She spent most of her childhood in Oklahoma (Indian Territory). Her schooling came to an end when her teacher was lynched by a group of local men. At the age of fourteen both her parents died. She now had the task of raising her eight younger brothers and sisters. The three youngest were taken to live with their grandmother whereas Elinore and the five older children went to work for the local railroad company.

Elinore eventually married a man much older than her. He was killed in an accident and despite having a young child, she trained to become a nurse. Elinore worked at a hospital in Burnt Fork but in her spare time wrote articles for the Kansas City Star. Later she moved with her daughter, Jerrine, to Denver, where she found work as a cook.

In 1909 Elinore went to work for Clyde Stewart, at his isolated ranch in Denver. Six weeks later she married the 41 year old widower. Over the next few years the couple had four children. The first one died but the three boys survived childhood.

Elinore wrote regular letters to Mrs. Coney, a former employer. Coney was impressed with the standard of Elinore's writing and arranged for them to be published in the Atlantic Monthly. They also appeared in two books, Letters of a Woman Homesteader (1914), and Letters on an Elk Hunt (1915).
Elinore Pruitt Stewart died in 1933.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 1, 2003
ISBN9781467610841
Author

Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Elinore Pruitt Stewart was born in 1878. Letters of a Woman Homesteader, first published in 1914, inspired the critically acclaimed movie Heartland.

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Reviews for Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Rating: 4.461538461538462 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

52 ratings22 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a series of letters written by Elinore to her friend back east. I think there are letters missing because there were big gaps. That being said, it was a better than average book. What I found interesting is that even though married, she had her own claim and worked it with no help from her husband who also had his own claim. Elinore was good friends with Zebulon Pike and traveled extensively, which really wasn't normal for that date and time. The writer had some connection with the Mormons but I was unable to ascertain what that was. 3 1/2 stars 144 pages
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a great collection of letters! Stewart has such a warm tone and such a way with description (amidst all her self-deprecation that she has no skill with language). I get the sense that there is much she isn't saying, but it isn't terribly hard to draw lines in between the missives to her former employer.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a series of letters written by Elinore to her friend back east. I think there are letters missing because there were big gaps. That being said, it was a better than average book. What I found interesting is that even though married, she had her own claim and worked it with no help from her husband who also had his own claim. Elinore was good friends with Zebulon Pike and traveled extensively, which really wasn't normal for that date and time. The writer had some connection with the Mormons but I was unable to ascertain what that was. 3 1/2 stars 144 pages
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An excellent audiobook -- adventurous and touching.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is an interesting read showing an upbeat look at life as a woman homesteader. The book is a series of letters from Mrs. Stewart to a friend back east.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Literally sick from the hard work and poor living conditions in Denver, widowed Elinore took her ~4 year old daughter and settled in the wilds of Wyoming. Although the territory was largely unpeopled and filled with physical hardship, Elinore loved it. She wrote amusing letters filled with anecdotes to her friends back home; this is a collection of some of them. Her descriptions of the beautiful landscapes and odd people she encounters are wonderfully wrought. Altogether, it's rather like a sarcastic, grown-up version of the Little House books.


    *note: Elinore was a Southerner writing in 1909-1913, and she unapologetically uses the n-word throughout the book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book. The letter-writer must have been a wonderful woman. I would have loved to have known her.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Thoroughly enjoyable tale told in letters. A plucky widow moves west with her infant. With humor, wit and optimism she writes of her riveting life. Hard work doesn't daunt her.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Letters of a Woman Homesteader is just that, letters written by a young widow who left Denver in 1909 with her two year old daughter to try and make a better life. She had been working as a "daily domestic" and moved to Wyoming to become the live-in housekeeper for a Scottish cattleman. She decides to try homesteading and claims the plot next to her employeer's land. The letters chronicle her life in Wyoming through 1913. It's a heart-warming story of early 20th century life in the west.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Written in a warm chatty style, Letters of a Woman Homesteader paints an interesting picture of homesteading in Wyoming in the early 1900’s. The author, a widow with a young child, takes on the role of housekeeper on a ranch while at the same time files her own claim on land that adjoins this ranch. To prove her claim she plants and grows vegetables and makes some basic improvements on the property. She marries the rancher and all the while continues to write letters to her friend in Denver describing her life.With both humor and insight she describes her day to day activities and that of her neighbours. This isn’t an easy life, they are miles from any town or railroad and have to learn to be self-sufficient in many areas, including medicine. Even going to a neighbours for a dinner party means a long overnight camping trip to get there. Yet even while living such an isolated life, her letters portray her love of life and nature. Her prose is simple and heartfelt, and her descriptions of the natural world that surround her allow the reader to feel part of that world as well.Eleanor Pruitt Stewart was a strong, independent woman, as I imagine most women who homesteaded had to be. When there wasn’t a minister available for a funeral service, she went ahead and conducted the services for her new-born son herself. But beyond having this core of steel, she was a woman who found the place she was meant to be. “I love the flicker of an open fire, the smell of the pines, the pure, sweet air, and I went to sleep thinking how blest I was to be able to enjoy the things I love most.” An enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loved this! Stewart's letters are delightful. Betsy-Tacy is always my frame of reference for the early teens, and I kept thinking about how while Elinore was mowing the meadow or helping someone deliver a baby, Betsy was trying to get a bath in a German hostel. Stewart is indomitable, plucky, and amusing as all get-out. Her life is interesting, her voice unique.

    The narrator was good. The letters, terrific!

    Highly recommended for all the BT folks.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Did you ever wonder what life might be like on the early 20th century frontier for a woman and her daughter? In this series of letters written to persons back home, we find the story of a woman who was tough enough to make it. In some of the letters she details how she settled her claim which provides valuable information for persons researching pioneer settlers. Her life is truly remarkable and inspirational.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very descriptive look at life in Wyoming during the early 1900s. I believe it took a remarkable woman to do what she did. Very entertaining book and I hope to get a hard copy for my mom. I think she would enjoy it as well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Elinore Pruitt Stewart was a strong pioneer woman, an adventurer, a loving mother, a hard worker, an imaginative problem solver and a great letter writer. She describes homesteading in Wyoming at the beginning of the 20th century in letters full of joy, love of the land, self assurance, community spirit and optimism. She thought any woman who tired of dreary, repetitive hard work in town should and could be a homesteader. She thought the work was no harder and the rewards far greater. She appeared to be a woman with no self doubt an an inspiration to us all.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    ”To me, homesteading is the solution of all poverty’s problems, but I realize that temperament has much to do with success in any undertaking, and persons afraid of coyotes and work and loneliness had better let ranching alone. At the same time, any woman who can stand her own company, can see the beauty of the sunset, loves growing things and is willing to put in as much time at careful labor as she does over the washtub, will certainly succeed; will have independence, plenty to eat all the time, and a home of her own in the end.”Elinor Pruitt takes her future into her own hands and heads to Wyoming with her young daughter. While proving up her own homestead, she keeps house and cooks for the bachelor at the next homestead, in this way making an income meantime. Her letters back home to her friend are full of the beauties of her surroundings, and accounts of encounters with neighbors, Mormons, wild creatures, and weather. The saved letters cover her years in Wyoming from 1909-1913. I would love to have letters such as these in my family history. They are full of emotion and fact and held me rapt for the duration of the book. ”Did you ever eat pork and beans heated in a frying-pan on a camp-fire for breakfast? Then if you have not, there is one delight left you. But you must be away out in Wyoming, with the morning sun just gilding the distant peaks, and your pork and beans must be out of a can, heated in a disreputable old frying-pan, served with coffee boiled in a battered old pail and drunk from a tomato-can. ”
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While not a novel as such, this is an interesting publication of a series of letters written by a homestead woman around 1909 in Wyoming. The letters were written to a former female employer and, apparently good friend, and chronicles her life during a short period of time and the struggles and optimism and her love of nature. No replies are recorded and the letters are written in a semi-diary format. The value of this book lies in the attitude of the writer, her self-sufficiency and her descriptions of a wide-open country life.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is a collection of letters from a woman who leaves the east to homestead and be a housekeeper for a Scottish man in Wyoming to her former employer., and are a delight to read. The author reveals herself to be an intrepid woman to which nothing is too big a problem to surmount. She grabs life with both hands & enjoys the ride.At first I doubted that this was actually a work of non-fiction, but upon researching the author after I finished the book, I found that, indeed, she was a real person. I would compare her to the fictional Amelia Peabody of the famous mystery series. She is a woman of heart and pluck.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I really enjoyed reading her letters and wish there had been more!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What a delightful book! Elinore Pruitt Rupert Stewart was a prolific writer of letters. After her husband died, leaving her with a young infant, she decided to head west and see as much of the world as possible.After a bout of flu she was advised that she should travel out to Wyoming as she was supposed to fare better there. On a whim she contacted a man who was advertising for a housekeeper. She moved from Denver to Wyoming, near the Bad Land hills.This book is a collection of letters which she wrote to a dear friend and former employer in Denver. Over the course of the letters on learns bits and pieces about her life...a few secrets even. If you've never read this type of book or if you just think you might not be interested, I would still encourage you to broaden your reading horizons and read this little gem. At only 112 pages it is certainly a page-turner. I couldn't wait to see what Elinore and her gang might be upt to next. The best part is that she is quite the humorist. Not only does she find humor in many things, she is also able to convey humor through her writing. What a talent! How pleased must have been those people to whom she wrote letters! I can only imagine what a pleasure it must have been to know her. With such a bright and giving spirit, those around her must truly have been blessed. She, too, was blessed. Moving to Wyoming brought her to a land that was much less inhabited than where she had previously lived. She had to learn new ways. She also learned independence as she was also on a quest to prove her own homestead! In the course of doing that she also made many life-long friends and found that she did not have to be always so fiercely independent because she was surrounded by people who loved her and cared for her.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I thoroughly enjoyed Elinore's letters and her optimitstic view of a possible brutal time. She continually challenged herself and shared her achievements in a most delightful way. I too appreciated her clear view and appreciation of the natural beauty around her and her affection for her husband.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Some of it was interesting. I like historical books but I guess I don't really care for books made up just of letters. I found it harder to follow and real slow. I think if it was written in story form I would have enjoyed it more.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A timeless collection of vignettes about life on the frontier at the turn of the century.