Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Wyoming homesteader Elinore Pruitt Stewart was born Elinore Pruitt on June 3, 1876, and died on October 8, 1933. She sent letters to a previous employer in Denver, Colorado, outlining her life there. Two compilations of her letters were released in 1914 and 1915. The 1979 film Heartland was based on the first of those compilations. On June 3, 1876, Elinore Pruitt was born at White Bead Hill, which is now a deserted township in the Chickasaw Nation of Indian Territory. Near the Mexican border, her father passed away in the late 1870s while serving in the Army. She wed Harry Cramer Rupert, who was 48 at the time, somewhere about 1902. For many years, she kept her marriage a secret because she wanted to be able to claim the property as her own. She gave up her claim in 1912 in favor of her mother-in-law rather than risk losing it for failing to comply with the Homestead Acts' rules for claims made by unmarried women. The years 1909 to 1914 are covered in Letters of a Woman Homesteader. August through October 1914 are the two action-packed months covered in Letters on an Elk Hunt. When a horse bolted in 1926, a hay mower ran over her, causing severe injuries from which she never fully recovered.

ELINORE PRUITT STEWART (1876-1933) caused a literary sensation in 1914 when her Letters of a Woman Homesteader was published. A recent widow and now-single mother to a small daughter, she accepted a job as housekeeper to a wealthy cattleman in Wyoming named Stewart. These letters, written between April 1909 and November 1913, document her arrival in Wyoming, the purchase and homesteading of her own plot of land as she continued to work for Stewart, her marriage to Stewart in 1910, and their life together even as she-a stubbornly independent woman-continued to work her own land.
Though not intended originally for later publication, Stewart's missives are short stories in themselves, regaling us with joyous tales of a life lived to the fullest, of the fortunes and misfortunes that abound on the frontier to all who dare to tame it.

A classic of pioneer life, this is a perceptive and enthralling work.