Celebrate Strong Women

Women of Yesteryear by Jim Thunder

I liked this article very much. There's something profoundly respectful about celebrating the lives of your ancestors. And I'm jealous of Jim for knowing so much about his past. I know very little about my family beyond my grandparents' generation. My mom was adopted and had a great devotion to her adoptive parents, but she knew nothing about her birth family except that her parents were married and she was adopted at age three.

I wish I'd asked my dad more about his family. My grandfather on his side was raised in Wisconsin. Daddy said when Grandpa was a boy he earned a nickle a cup for pulling potato bugs off the crops. My grandmother was the youngest of thirteen and an amazingly versatile woman. She could do every kind of needlework and produced some absolutely beautiful things. I still have a few. But she also learned to develop her own film and to paint and make ceramics. She taught retarded children and my mom said people whose children she schooled came up to her at Grandma's funeral and said they don't know what they would have done without her. I wish I'd known her better. My grandparents visited infrequently and we moved frequently because of Daddy's job in the Navy. She was stern and I was afraid of her as a little girl. Now as an adult I'm sorry I never got to know her.

Praise God for your own ancestors today, especially the "founding mothers" of your family. I often offer daily Mass for my ancestors, especially those who passed on the faith. And that means I'm praying especially for the first teachers, the moms, who taught their little ones to pray and to think about the things of God.

Jim includes a list of books for those interested in reading about pioneer women. What a great addition for girls after they finish The Little House books. Sounds like a treasure trove for home schoolers.

Joanna L. Stratton, Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier
Harriet Fish Backus, Tomboy Bride
Margaret A. Frink, Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails
Conrad Richter's trilogy, The Trees, The Fields and The Town
Jane Jacobs, editor, A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece
Virginia Cornell, Doc Susie: The True Story of a Country Physician in the Colorado Rockies
Carol Crawford McManus, Ida: Her Labor of Love
Agnes Morley Cleaveland, No Life for a Lady (Women of the West).