Ft. Caspar Lecture Series #1

This evening while Joe went home teaching, I attended a lecture sponsored by the Ft. Caspar Museum. It was entitled "Women Homesteaders" and was very informative. The presenters name was Marcia Meredith Hensley and she is the author of a book "Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West". This is a picture of me with the author and yes, I bought a copy of her book. Hey, it sounds like a great read.

Some of the facts I found out tonight were:

• 12% of homesteaders in the west were single women who were 21-35 years of age;


• over 200,000 single women may have attempted homesteading;


• 42% of the single women "proved up" which meant they had to live on their homesteaded land for 7 out of 12 months for a total of five years; they had to build some type of house; and they had to make their land productive by growing crops or trees or irrigating the land;


• they had to be 21 years old to file for land. The oldest woman known to have filed was 63 years old in 1908.


• if a woman married before "proving" her land, it belonged to her new husband. What a bummer!!!

In Wyoming, out of 660 single women who homesteaded, 455 remained single, 192 married after filing and 13 widows did not marry. And, these were the approximate costs incurred by a new woman homesteader:

• Land filing fee - $14.00;


• $4.00 per acre to hire someone to break sod on their new land;


• $50.00 to have a shack built;


• $21.75 for a stove, furniture and tools; and


• $15.00 travel money from Minnesota to North Dakota.

Interesting, huh? I really can't wait to read her book which is filled with pictures, letters, newspaper articles, etc.

I also need to google, yahoo and/or bling the following ladies whom she mentioned:

• Elinore Pruitt Steward
• Alice Newberry
• Julia Erickson
• Ida Garvin
• Alice Hildreth Zehm
• Geraldine Lucas;
• Cecelia Weiss who wrote her adventures in "Homesteading Without a Chaperone" and;
• Florence Blake Smith who wrote about her homesteading adventure entitled "Cow Chips and Cactus".

In some ways, I almost feel like a homesteader since we've moved to Casper. Everything is new. Everything is different. Every day is an adventure it seems. When the author signed my book, she wrote..."To Carol, A modern day homesteader in Wyoming". So here I am "proving" myself and hoping I make it the five years plus.