Honoring Old West Women

Welcome to Women Honoring the West!

I know, I know. Most of the women who guest blog are from Women Writing the West. It’s such an amazing writing organization with wonderful women! Kimberly Burns is no exception. She’s sweet, talented, gracious, and generous.

So let’s get started and take a look at Kimberly’s story.

I didn’t grow up on a ranch. In fact, I’m allergic to horses. I don’t even live west of the Mississippi River. What business do I have writing about women of the Old West from my suburban home in Florida?

Well…pull a seat partner and let me tell ya’.

Both my maternal and paternal grandparents homesteaded in Colorado in the late 19th century. My Great-Great-Grandma Hall helped pack the valuables in the wagon and then followed behind—on foot—for the next 2000 miles—while caring for six children.

Pioneer women survived burning deserts, raging rivers, endless empty prairies, and snow-encrusted mountains.

And when they arrived at their new home, there was nothing there. None of the social or cultural institutions provided civility and improved the quality of life. The Colorado mining camps often had a dozen saloons, but no churches or schools. It was the women who built a community in those rough boom towns.

They constructed houses and organized town governments.

Because there was no one else to do it, women ran businesses, ranches, and farms. As a result, the social dictates and norms of the day were smashed like a China teacup falling off a westward wagon.

There were few acceptable careers for women in the 1800s, and certainly none that created wealth. Most working women struggled on subsistence earnings as laundresses, cooks, maids, or teachers. But in the West, where survival often depended on everyone pulling their weight, women could not afford to be shrinking violets.

Their husbands and communities needed all hands to pitch in. The move west wrenched women from the customs, conventions, standards, and traditions with which they had been raised. They had to develop new codes of acceptable behavior, dress, and more.

In my novel The Mrs. Tabor, a local madam explains that a woman alone can act with the highest decorum, and in the end, she will politely starve to death. The madam warns, “The law of survival always trumps the rules of etiquette.”

The need for labor gave Western women opportunities to create careers that their sisters in the East did not have. Women were often good with livestock and ran cattle ranches, bred horses, or drove pack mules. It is estimated that 15% of homesteaders were single women.

In an era when women could not sign a legal contract or open a bank account, female entrepreneurs owned restaurants, stores, and hotels in frontier towns. The stories of these ordinary women doing extraordinary things were not well recorded back in their day and are in danger of becoming lost entirely with the passage of time. I cannot let that happen.

Fierce, tough, independence is my heritage.

Resilience and determination are in my DNA.

I inherited a strong will and a tenacious spirit. I am Western to my core.

My next two novels are based on old family tales of my great-grandmothers’ lives as they helped build the family homesteads and settle the West.

May I honor their memories.

Connect with Kimberly.

Kimberly Burns’ books are available in eBook, paperback, and audiobook.
The Mrs. Tabor
The Redemption of Mattie Silks

Follow Kimberly Burns, Author on Facebook and Instagram.

Visit her website at
www.kimberlyburnsauthor.com

About the Author

Kimberly Burns grew up in Colorado hearing stories about the colorful characters of the Old West. She has degrees from the University of Colorado and the University of Hartford. Kimberly is a member of the Historical Novel Society, Western Writers of America, and Women Writing the West.

Her debut novel The Mrs. Tabor won numerous. Her latest release, The Redemption of Mattie Silks, is a finalist for the CIBA Laramie Book Award for American and Western Fiction, as well as a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award. She lives with her husband and black Lab in Florida and Virginia where she enjoys writing and researching wild-willed women.

I hope you enjoyed Kimberly’s story. She’d love to hear from you. Drop your thoughts and questions in the comments.