Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919 (American Land & Life)

In July 1909 twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth Corey left her Iowa farm to stake her claim to a South Dakota homestead. Over the next ten years, as she continued her schoolteaching career and carved out a home for herself in this inhospitable territory, she sent a steady stream of letters to her family back in Iowa. From the edge of modern America, Bess wrote long, gossipy accounts—"our own continuing adventure story, " according to her brother Paul—of frontier life on the high plains west of the Missouri River. Irrepressible, independent-minded, and evidently fearless, the self-styled Bachelor Bess gives us a firsthand, almost daily account of her homesteading adventures. We can all stake a claim in her energetic letters. In July 1909 twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth Corey left her Iowa farm to stake her claim to a South Dakota homestead. Over the next ten years, as she continued her schoolteaching career and carved out a home for herself in this inhospitable territory, she sent a steady stream of letters to her family back in Iowa. From the edge of modern America, Bess wrote long, gossipy accounts & mdash;"our own continuing adventure story," according to her brother Paul & mdash;of frontier life on the high plains west of the Missouri River. Irrepressible, independent-minded, and evidently fearless Edited By Philip L. Gerber ; Foreword By Paul Corey ; Afterword By Wayne Franklin. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [397]-449) And Index.