Frontier Women of Oklahoma in the 19th & Early 20th Century: What Were They Up Against?

I.  Women Who Pioneered Oklahoma:  Stories from the WPA Narratives.

Where did you learn about women on Oklahoma's frontier:  television, movies, novels?  Have you noticed gaps in the popular record? 

You can fill in many of those gaps with a nonfiction book edited by Terri M. Baker and Connie Oliver Henshaw, 

• ​Women Who Pioneered Oklahoma:  Stories from the WPA Narratives, 
• University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2007.

Baker and Henshaw's work drew from the Oklahoma Indian Pioneer Papers, a written record of 11,000 interviews conducted throughout the state of Oklahoma in 1936-1937 with people the "fieldworkers believed knew about pioneer life and had experiences that should be recorded."  

• The typed pages of the 11,000 interviews were bound into 112 volumes.  That extensive record would not have been possible without a grant from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) secured by the University of Oklahoma in conjunction with the Oklahoma Historical Society.  

 

• One of the many things that I enjoyed about the book is that it includes interviews with African-American, Anglo, and Native American women who lived the harsh life of the 19th- and early 20th-century frontier.  Baker and Henshaw grouped selected portions of interviews to depict aspects of the women's lives, for example, making a home, facing adversity, and living with lawlessness.  

The voices of the frontier women are eloquent. ​

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