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A Homesteader's Portfolio
About this book
"So much is so skillfully crammed into this little book that the reader comes to admire Pratt's zest while wondering how she could possibly have endured. . . . A splendid introduction by Molly Gloss, author of The Jump-Off Creek, enhances the book with a biography of the author and a study of her writings." âOregon Historical Quarterly
In 1911 Alice Day Pratt, single and nearing forty, boarded a train and left the east coast to file claim on 160 acres of land in the Central Oregon high desert. She was one among tens of thousands of people who took up homesteads in the arid West in the early twentieth century. Perhaps as many as 20 percent of these settlers were single women. Yet homesteading women are largely missing from the literature and histories of the West.
The commonly held image of frontier women as powerless and dependent helpmates stems in part from the scarcity of written accounts by homesteading women. Alice Day Pratt's powerful memoir presents a rare, fascinating account of the life of a woman homesteader and chronicles her single-handed efforts to overcome the obstacles that faced all homesteadersâmen and womenâin the dryland West.
Pratt's independent and adventurous spirit allowed her to hang on to her "homesteading dream" for more than a decade after most other homesteaders had packed their belongings and left the desert. By exploring the life she lived and the choices she made, Pratt offers an important glimpse into the social and cultural history of the American West.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Introduction: Alice Day Pratt and the Homestead Dream by Molly Gloss
- 1. The Adventure
- 2. The Roundup
- 3. Business is Business
- 4. The New Land in Autumn
- 5. The New Land in Spring
- 6. Incubation
- 7. The Life of the Pioneers
- 8. âAnd the Evening and the Morning Were the First Dayâ
- 9. White Leghorns
- 10. Acquaintance
- 11. The Bachelors
- 12. The Old Oregonian
- 13. The Quest of Diogenes
- 14. Dinner in the Basin
- 15. âBehold, in the Tentâ
- 16. Spring
- 17. Aunt Polly, Pioneer
- 18. âTo-morrow and To-morrow and To-morrowâ
- 19. Bossy and Psalmmy
- 20. Fly
- 21. The Companions
- 22. The Survival of the Fittest
- 23. The Witness
- 24. Plowing
- 25. The Old Oregonian Again
- 26. To Have and to Hold
- 27. Afterword
- A Tribute