Charles Marion Russell by Nancy J. Farrier

 

Charles Marion Russell

Charles Marion Russell, probably best known as an artist who depicted life in the Old West, also wore many other hats. He was a well-known story teller, a writer, historian, and an advocate for the Western Plains Indians. He loved the outdoors and he loved his adopted State of Montana so much that he didn’t want to leave.

Camp Cook's Troubles
Courtesy Wikipedia Commons

Born in 1864, in St. Louis, Missouri, Charles wanted to grow up to be a cowboy. His father partnered in a brick manufacturing business, but Charles, who struggled with book learning, wanted to go west. Just shy of his sixteenth birthday, he arrived in Montana ready to fulfill that dream. He started out learning the wilderness from a hunter and trader, Jake Hoover, spending two years with him.

The Tenderfoot
Courtesy Wikipedia Commons

In 1882, he began to live his dream as a night herder for some cattle outfits. What he didn’t realize at the time, was that he would gain more than learning to wrangle cattle. He would learn firsthand how the men and animals of the west interacted. Later, he would turn those memories into paintings and sculptures so realistic they would seem to take on a life of their own.

Waiting for Chinook
Courtesy Wikipedia Commons

In a depiction of a particularly brutal winter, Russell painted a watercolor of a starving cow surrounded by wolves. This picture brought him widespread recognition in 1887. By this time, he was already known locally for his story telling. He had a quiet way of speaking that kept his audience enthralled.

The Cryer
Courtesy Wikipedia Commons

By 1893, Russell turned to art full time. In 1896, he married Nancy Cooper. She had a head for business and in time became his business manager. Russell painted more than 2,000 pictures, plus the many bronze sculptures he made. His artwork appeared on postcards, color reproductions and in calendars. He was considered the first “Western” artist to live most of his life in the West. 

Buccaroos
Courtesy Wikipedia Commons

Stories abound on the life of Charles Russell. He was known as a constant smoker. It’s said that as soon as one cigarette finished, he would stop and roll another one. This often happened when he would be telling stories to an audience. Even if he had come to a critical place in the story, he would stop talking until he’d finished rolling and lighting his next cigarette. He expected his listeners to wait and they were so caught up in the tale he’d been unravelling that they did wait for him.

To the Victor Belongs the Spoils
Courtesy Wikipedia Commons

Russell was also noted for not laughing as he told stories. He spoke in a slow, drawling narrative, is expression deadpan. Even if he had his listeners laughing aloud, he didn't smile, or change from his serious demeanor. 

I love Russell's vivid portrayal of the West. Have you ever seen any of Charles Russell's paintings or sculpture? I appreciate that he lived the life before putting it on canvas, in bronzes or in words. What other artist do you know that did this?

Nancy J Farrier is an award-winning, best-selling author who lives in Southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats and dog, and spend time with her family. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.

Forgotten Ways of the Wild West

 

Forgotten Ways of the Wild West: Things We Don’t Do Anymore

By Janalyn Voigt, author of the Montana Gold series

As a historical fiction author with a deep love for the Old West, I find those intrepid individuals who carved out homes in the wilderness fascinating. While writing the Montana Gold series, I researched everything from nineteenth-century fashion to the mechanics of loading a Henry rifle. But what interested me most were the common practices they engaged in that we rarely think about today or just don’t do anymore.

Read on and appreciate how far we've come since Wild West days—or maybe you’ll wish you could return to a simpler time.

1. Tying Up Horses at Hitching Posts

In modern life, we tap our key fob to lock the car and walk away. In the 1800s, you didn't drive a vehicle—you rode one with a mind of its own. Hitching posts were essential outside churches, general stores, and saloons. These sturdy wooden rails or metal rings placed near buildings allowed riders to secure their horses with a length of rope or reins.

Many towns even had watering troughs nearby so horses could drink while their owners conducted business. Imagine strolling into a dry goods store, the sun blazing overhead, and hearing the gentle stomp and snort of your horse waiting patiently outside. That sound has a place in my heart—and in many scenes of the Montana Gold series.

2. Saturday Night Baths—in a Tin Tub

These days, a warm bath is a simple matter of turning on a faucet. Not so in the Wild West. Back then, cleanliness required water to be hauled from a well, creek, lake, or river—and heated over a fire or on a wood stove. It's easy to see why bathing was a luxury often reserved for Saturday nights. Those fortunate to live in a town that held Sunday services liked to scrub up beforehand. Christian households honored Sunday as a day of rest regardless, with Bible reading and prayer. Visiters might stop by on Sunday, which made personal cleanliness desirable.

Families shared the same bathwater, starting with the eldest and working down in age. The practice gives new meaning to the old phrase, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

In Cheyenne Sunrise, one of the novels in the Montana Gold series, my characters face this very challenge, and it becomes both a humorous and tender moment—one of many that show how hardship could bring people closer.

3. Brushing Teeth with Chalk and Charcoal

Woman brushing in 1899;
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Toothpaste in a tube wasn’t available until the late 1800s, but western settlers cleaned their teeth with baking soda, salt, powdered chalk, or even finely ground charcoal. They used homemade or imported toothbrushes—often with hog bristles and wooden handles. 

If you had a toothache, you might take whiskey for the pain and visit the local blacksmith or barber, who often doubled as a dentist. Ouch.

4. Lighting with Oil Lamps and Candles

Electricity hadn’t yet reached most western towns. Even by the late 1800s, light after dark came from kerosene lamps, whale oil lanterns, or candles. These sources required constant attention—trimming wicks, clearing soot from glass chimneys, and refilling oil. They also brought a constant threat of fire, which is why many folks kept buckets of sand or water on hand.

5. Sending Letters... and Waiting Weeks for a Reply

Advertisement for Pony Express Riders

In the era before email or even reliable phone service, letters brought distant loved ones closer. Sent by stagecoach or train, a letter could take weeks—or months—to arrive. This delay made every word precious. I often think that slowness forced a deeper kind of communication. People wrote their letters with more intention, knowing they might not hear back for some time.

Letters were more than ink on paper; they were vessels of the soul. In Stagecoach to Liberty, another novel in the Montana Gold series, my heroine carries a letter close to her heart—one that holds secrets, hopes, and the power to change everything.

6. Making Do

Folks in the Wild West couldn’t run to Walmart or order from Amazon Prime. If their clothes ripped, they mended them. If their boots wore out, they patched them—or made a trade. Children played with rag dolls, whittled toys, or made do with sticks and a little imagination. And they were the richer for it.

Why These Old Ways Still Matter

In this fast-paced world, we can slow down and savor the quiet pace of yesteryear. Remembering these forgotten practices of the Wild West connects us with the perseverance, simplicity, and faith that still resonates today.

That’s what I aim to capture in my writing—a sense of stepping into the past, not just to learn history, but to rediscover values that never go out of style: love, courage, forgiveness, and the faith to keep going.

So, the next time you flip a light switch, run a hot bath, or brush your teeth with minty freshness, pause a moment to appreciate those who came before us and the lifestyle they led.

Fall in Love with the Wild West

If you're new to the Montana Gold series, it's the perfect time to saddle up and ride into the pages of history. These bestselling Christian historical romance novels offer heartwarming stories of faith, love, and courage.

Learn more about the series here → http://janalynvoigt.com/bookstore

About Janalyn Voigt

Hi, I'm Janalyn, an avid reader and serial daydreamer. I fell in love with literature at an early age when my father read chapters from classics as bedtime stories. When I grew older, I put herself to sleep with tales "written" in my head. Today I'm a storyteller writing in several genres. Romance, mystery, adventure, history, and whimsy appear in all my novels. If that sounds good to you, let's keep in touch.

Learn more about me and the books I write at the Janalyn Voigt website.

Incarcerating Outlaws in the Old West

By Jennifer Uhlarik

 

Hello, readers! For the past several months, I’ve been sharing some of the fun facts I had the pleasure of researching for my recent release, Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West Romantic Mystery. This month, I am sharing some interesting tidbits about the jails and prisons of the Old West—and how some prisoners escaped these places.

 

This isn’t my first time writing about jails—either on this blog or in one of my stories. So to recap a previous post that I wrote several years back, here’s a bit about the jails in the Old West. 

 

What were Old West jails really like?

 

Many Hollywood movies and television shows depict a rather secure, up-to-date building with multiple cells and modern-looking bars on the windows and doors—but the reality was usually much cruder. Sometimes, a jail was nothing more than a large tree, boulder, or telegraph pole with a prisoner tied or chained to it. Other times, the jail was a deep pit dug into the ground with wood planks covering the hole, and a lawman standing guard.

The Wickenburg "Jail"

 

When there was a more traditional jail facility, these varied greatly. They would’ve been constructed of whatever material was most readily available in the area, be it milled wood planks, logs, stones, brick, or adobe. Many were separate single-room buildings—with a door and little else. No indoor plumbing. No modern conveniences. A bucket for a toilet—if that. (Can you imagine the stench?) Often, these facilities were overcrowded, and illness and disease spread easily in such confines.

 

In some rare cases, a locality would put more money and effort into making their jail facilities liveable—building a “modern” jail with multiple cells, barred windows and doors for ventilation, a room for the guards to sleep in, a kitchen to prepare meals, and a space for the inmates to stretch their legs or exercise. 

 

What happened once an outlaw was tried and convicted of a years-long sentence—where did he go then?

 

It all depended on the state or territory. If there was a prison available, the inmate was transported to that facility. But if one hadn’t been built in that territory or state yet, the inmate continued his stay in the local jail for the length of his sentence. (Thus, the overcrowding). As the old saying goes, idle hands are the devil’s playground, so if left to sit very long with nothing to do, rebellions or riots sometimes ensued. To keep these down, the prisoners might be flogged or put in a separate location for solitary confinement. Or, often they were relegated to manual labor in chain gangs.

 

Once such example was in the Arizona Territory. As the population of Arizona grew, it was decided that they would build a territorial prison and Yuma was chosen as the appropriate site. Seven men with multi-year sentences were pulled from their respective local jails and sent to the blazing-hot desert and forced to build the dreaded Yuma Territorial Prison, then incarcerated in the very facility they’d built themselves. (Though from what I’ve read about that facility, it had a library, a school program where inmates learned the Three R’s, and more “amenities” that made it rather more luxurious than many other prisons).

Yuma Territorial Prison

 

How secure were the jails in the Old West?

 

Oftentimes, not very secure at all! In fact, one article I read in my research of jails described them as “leaky”—meaning they were easy to escape from. You’ve got stories of notorious escapes like Butch Cassidy, who used a smuggled tool to pick the lock on his cell door and escape his jail. In less well-known instances, I read about an outlaw gang coming to the jail and lifting the corner of the building off its foundation just far enough that their compatriot could squirm out under the wall. In cases of jails made from adobe, the walls could be dug through fairly easily, so if left unsupervised for long enough (which was often the case—as many towns didn’t have the inmates guarded overnight), the prisoners had ample time to dig out and escape. In another case, I read of a heavy rainstorm kicking up a flash flood, which washed out the corner of a jailhouse, allowing the inmate to slip into the water and be “washed away” by the current. Then, of course, there’s the “Great Escape” from Yuma (since I have already mentioned that territorial prison). In that instance, three inmates managed to tunnel out from the prison and escape across hundreds of miles of brutal desert terrain. So even the larger prisons weren’t immune to escapes.

 

It’s Your Turn: Tell me what you find most interesting about the incarceration practices of the Old West.

 

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered western novels at twelve when she swiped the only “horse” book from her brother’s bookshelf. Across the next decade, she devoured westerns and fell in love with the genre. While attaining a B.A. in writing from the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. She has finaled in and won numerous writing competitions and appeared on various best-seller lists. Besides writing, she’s been a business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, a historical researcher, a publisher, and a full-time homemaker. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband and fur children.

 

Available now from your favorite bookseller:

Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West Romantic Mystery 

Wanted: Family, Love, and Justice

One Old West Mystery Solved Throughout Three Short Romantic Stories

Separated as children when they were adopted out to different families from an orphan train, the Braddock siblings have each grown up and taken on various jobs within law enforcement and criminal justice.

 

Youngest child, Callie, has pushed past her insecurities to pursue a career as a Pinkerton agent. Middle child, Andi, has spent years studying law under her adoptive father’s tutelage. And the eldest and only son, Rion, is a rough-and-tumble bounty hunter. 

 

When the hunt for a serial killer with a long history of murders reunites the brother and sisters in Cambria Springs, Colorado, they find themselves not only in a fight for justice, but also a fight to keep their newly reunited family intact. How will they navigate these challenges when further complicated by unexpected romances? 

Dime Novels of the Old West—and a Giveaway

By Jennifer Uhlarik

 

Howdy, readers! I’m back to share another interesting tidbit of my research from my upcoming release, Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West Romantic Mystery. This month, I thought I’d share about the research I did for the character of Lucinda Peters. This spunky heroine is a dime novelist and aspiring newspaper reporter. Have you heard of dime novels? If not, let me share what these were.

 

Around the time of the American Civil War, the literacy rate in this country began to grow. In response to the uptick of readers in America, people began looking for easily accessible material to read. Publishers Erastrus and Irwin Beadle met that need when, in 1860, they began releasing a new series of fiction novels, printed in inexpensive paperback formats, and sold for ten cents each. The topics of these novels most often centered around America’s western frontier—stories about the Gold Rush and/or mining camps; building of the railroad; lawmen, outlaws, and other notable characters of the frontier; and many other such topics.

The first Dime Novel,
published in 1860.
Note the lack of cover artwork.

 

The first of these “dime novels” was a reprint of a serialized story written by Ann S. Stephens (who went on to author many of Beadle’s dime novels), titled Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter. This serialized story first appeared some twentyish years earlier in the Ladies’ Companion magazine, so the material was old enough that most people wouldn’t immediately recognize it as a reprinted story. It came wrapped in a salmon-colored paper, with no artwork on the cover—only the title. However, in its new format as a dime novel, this story of roughly 100 pages sold around 65,000 copies in its first several months. It was a hit!

Another early example of a
dime novel, this time with 
cover artwork.

 

Because of this early success, Beadle, along with Ann Stephens, went on to reprint more of her older, serialized stories. And as this new series grew in popularity, the publisher had Stephens write new, original material for their novels as well. With the quick success of the Beadle’s Dime Novel series, particularly with the younger readers, other publishers followed in their footsteps. By the end of the Civil War, there were all manner of publishers putting out their own versions of the dime novels. Each publisher had their own style—the dimensions of their books might be a little different, and one company’s covers might have black-and-white artwork while another company’s cover sported only the title. At first, each was sold with a colored outer wrapping—a different color for each publisher, but as time went on and printing technology became better, the covers changed to color printing on white paper. Also, the topics covered began to grow. Not only were they stories of the American frontier—but also historical romances, science fiction, mysteries, war stories, adventure stories, and more. Interestingly, dime novels were often authored by women.

Dime novel with a color cover.

 

Dime novels quickly developed a reputation as not being of the greatest literary quality. In fact, many in polite society frowned on this form of cheap entertainment. The stories were churned out quickly, and the writing wasn’t always of the highest quality. Within the stories themselves, the exploits of the characters were often exaggerated, making the lawmen sound more righteous or the outlaws more villainous than they truly were. Often, the storylines covered only the most superficial aspects without getting to the true depths of the real story. So many of the highbrow folks in society took the view that these cheap novels contributed to the degradation of their society.   

 

Despite the poor view many held of this literary form, dime novels endured in popularity for decades. The original dime novel series from Beadle was published from 1860 until sometime in the 1920s. The company published 321 issues in its sixtyish-year run. The many other publishers also continued into the first few decades of the 1900s, but the fad finally died out around 1925.

A later version of the
dime novel.

 

A resurgence of interest in these early novels came in the 1940s and lasted into the 1950s. People began buying up old copies to add to collections they—or their parents and grandparents—had saved. Because of the very cheap paper these stories were printed on, they were often in fragile condition. Today, in 2025, there are still thousands in existence—but most are held in the Library of Congress, in collections at various universities around the country, or sometimes in the collections of museums or historical centers. Because of the fading quality of the papers, some collections have been digitized and are available online. To see one such collection, check out Nickels & Dimes.

 

It's Your Turn: Had you heard of dime novels? If you had lived in the time when they were popular, do you suppose you would have read them—or would you have seen them as bad for society? Leave your answer with your email address to be entered in a giveaway of a paperback copy of Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West Romantic Mystery. (U.S. Residents only, please).

 

 

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered western novels at twelve when she swiped the only “horse” book from her brother’s bookshelf. Across the next decade, she devoured westerns and fell in love with the genre. While attaining a B.A. in writing from the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. She has finaled in and won numerous writing competitions and appeared on various best-seller lists. Besides writing, she’s been a business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, a historical researcher, a publisher, and a full-time homemaker. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband and fur children.

 

 

Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West Romantic Mystery (coming April 1, 2025)

 

Wanted: Family, Love, and Justice

One Old West Mystery Solved Throughout Three Short Romantic Stories

Separated as children when they were adopted out to different families from an orphan train, the Braddock siblings have each grown up and taken on various jobs within law enforcement and criminal justice.

 

Youngest child, Callie, has pushed past her insecurities to pursue a career as a Pinkerton agent. Middle child, Andi, has spent years studying law under her adoptive father’s tutelage. And the eldest and only son, Rion, is a rough-and-tumble bounty hunter. 

 

When the hunt for a serial killer with a long history of murders reunites the brother and sisters in Cambria Springs, Colorado, they find themselves not only in a fight for justice, but also a fight to keep their newly reunited family intact. How will they navigate these challenges when further complicated by unexpected romances?

 

Bounty Hunting in the Old West: Fact vs. Fiction

By Jennifer Uhlarik

 

If you’ve watched more than a couple of western movies, you’ve probably noticed that such movies or TV shows would lead you to believe the iconic Old West bounty hunter was as common as a modern-day Starbucks location—at least one in every town, if not one on every corner. But was this actually the case? Let’s dig in and find out the realities of bounty hunting in the Old West!

 

THE AVERAGE BOUNTY WAS WORTH THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS?

 

Westerns of the big and small screens love to portray the bad guys with their images emblazoned on a tattered and yellowed Wanted Poster, and a dollar amount in the thousands as the prize for capturing such a baddy, “dead or alive.” The truth is, the average bounty was more in the very low three-figure range, not four. A typical bounty in the early 1870s was worth about $100. So the bounties shown in western movies of $1,000, $5,000, or $10,000 were extremely rare, if those prices ever actually happened.

Survey says:

 

 

MANY MADE THEIR SOLE INCOME BY BOUNTY HUNTING IN THE OLD WEST?

 

It is true that the Old West was a place where people with nefarious natures could escape from the scrutiny of more populated and civilized places back east, and sometimes, those people carried out all manner of reprehensible deeds. But did that mean that bounty hunters were a dime a dozen, just waiting to search out, capture, and collect on such wanted outlaws? Actually, no. For context, that average $100 bounty mentioned above would equal about $2587 in 2025’s economy. That doesn’t sound bad for one job…until you figure all the time and effort that might go into earning that prize. In cases that I have read about, it often took weeks or months to capture a criminal—and in more than a few cases, it took years! Weeks, months, or years of searching a wide-open countryside, in blazing sun or frigid snow, only to lose the target in the hustle and bustle of a busy cattle town or mining community and have to pick up his trail again. Weeks, months, or years of showing up too late to capture him before he robs another bank, kills another settler, or perpetrates some other kind of evil… I’m sure you can see the problem. The effort expended in chasing down, subduing, and turning in a single bad guy could far outweigh the payoff of a $100 bounty.

 

In fact, many bounties weren’t collected on by “lone wolf” bounty hunters at all. More often than not, when an outlaw was turned in, it was by a local sheriff or marshal, or an investigator for another agency, like a Pinkerton agent, Wells Fargo detective, railroad detective, or the like. The bounties they collected on became supplemental income to their standard wages from their day jobs.

Survey says:

COLLECTING THE MONEY PROMISED ON A WANTED POSTER WAS A SIMPLE MATTER AFTER TURNING IN THE OUTLAW TO THE NEAREST OFFICIAL?

 

Again, going back to the western legends and lore portrayed in movies and television, it would seem that all a bounty hunter had to do was turn in the outlaw to the nearest local sheriff or jailor, and he’d be paid on the spot. But like most things, it wasn’t always so easy. Receiving payment on a wanted poster depended on who promised that money in exchange for the outlaw’s capture. If it was a local sheriff or town council who’d put up the wanted poster, then yes, the bounty hunter would (or should) get paid upon turning that outlaw in to the local authorities. However, often, those bounties were promised by a state government, or even more frequently, by a railroad, a bank, or other investigative organization—like the Pinkertons. So in order to collect on the wanted poster, the bounty hunter would have to transport his capture to the office of whatever organization or person who promised the payment to begin with. This could mean days or weeks of travel with a handcuffed, perhaps injured outlaw who might very well be looking for any means of escape—or transporting the corpse, in the case the outlaw was killed during his capture. And according to some of my research, even upon delivering the outlaw to the proper authority, the money wasn’t always readily available. It just depended on who it was. Well-funded banks and railroads would pay quickly, as did the Pinkertons and large government agencies like the Secret Service. But in some cases, smaller, more fly-by-night entities might promise a reward for capturing an outlaw to draw people in—then not have the funds to pay all they’d promised when the bad guy was presented, or not pay in a quick manner. 

Survey says:

 

 

IT’S YOUR TURN: What surprised you most about the facts and fictions of Old West bounty hunters?

 

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered western novels at twelve when she swiped the only “horse” book from her brother’s bookshelf. Across the next decade, she devoured westerns and fell in love with the genre. While attaining a B.A. in writing from the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. She has finaled in and won numerous writing competitions and appeared on various best-seller lists. Besides writing, she’s been a business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, a historical researcher, a publisher, and a full-time homemaker. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband and fur children.

Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West Romantic Mystery (Coming April 1, 2025)

 

Wanted: Family, Love, and Justice

One Old West Mystery Solved Throughout Three Short Romantic Stories

Separated as children when they were adopted out to different families from an orphan train, the Braddock siblings have each grown up and taken on various jobs within law enforcement and criminal justice.

 

Youngest child, Callie, has pushed past her insecurities to pursue a career as a Pinkerton agent. Middle child, Andi, has spent years studying law under her adoptive father’s tutelage. And the eldest and only son, Rion, is a rough-and-tumble bounty hunter. 

 

When the hunt for a serial killer with a long history of murders reunites the brother and sisters in Cambria Springs, Colorado, they find themselves not only in a fight for justice, but also a fight to keep their newly reunited family intact. How will they navigate these challenges when further complicated by unexpected romances?

 

 

Mail-Order Bride from Russia

image by Vitaly_Stasov, deposit photos

by Martha Hutchens

The whole point of a mail-order bride is that the prospective bride and groom don’t live near each other. However, we normally think of it being a woman in the eastern United States joining a man somewhere in the west. Sometimes, the bride travelled a much greater distance.

Such was the case for Rachel Bella Kahn. She travelled from Chvedkifka, Russia in the 1890s.

Abraham Calof wrote an advertisement for a bride to join him in North Dakota. He required a woman of strong character, and most importantly, of the Jewish faith. When his first choice decided against traveling so far from family, he asked his sister to interview Rachel Kahn.

Rachel Kahn certainly had less concerns about leaving her family. Her father and stepmother were neglectful and abusive. Her job as a maid in her aunt’s mansion involved long hours and little pay. When she almost escaped through a love match with the local butcher, her family blocked the marriage because his occupation made him “inferior.” At seventeen, Rachel had already seen her share of heartbreak.

Then she received word that Abraham Calof liked what she wrote about herself. They exchanged pictures and liked each other’s looks. Abraham commissioned his oldest sister, Chaya, to interview his prospective bride. The interview included several tests, but Rachel won Chaya over when she did not become frustrated or angry while untangling a ball of knotted yarn.

Rachel traveled by train to Hamburg, Germany, then by ship to Ellis Island. Like many of the immigrants, she was desperately seasick. She forgot the misery when she saw Abraham waiting for her when she arrived in New York City. “There’s my beloved,” she said.

They traveled by train to North Dakota, where Abraham planned to file for a homestead near his family.

image by ehrlif, deposit photos

I think we forget just how desperate life on the frontier could be. Rachel probably thought she knew what she was getting into, but her first sight of her husband’s family shocked her. They were dirty, dressed in rags, and the men were barefoot. They she arrived at her new home. It was a 12 by 14 foot shack with a dirt floor, a bed, a table, and a stove. Since the couple was not married yet, they would be sharing this palace with Abraham’s parents, brother, sister-in-law, and two children.

Abraham understood her disappointment, and took her on long walks where he reassured her that this was a temporary situation. Eventually they would be own their own and happy.

In November of 1894, the couple was married. However, to conserve their limited fuel, the couple would be forced to continue living several other people, as well as livestock.

Abraham worked long hours in the field, and Rachel worked equally hard providing food for the two of them as well as for the children that they had. After five years of marriage, Abraham had enough money to build a larger home for their family, which included four children at the time.

By 1900, the homestead appeared to be prospering, with a bumper wheat crop in the field. And then hail came. Their crop was destroyed and their house was flooded. However, they persevered. 

image by IgorStrukov, deposit photos

By 1910, their homestead had grown much larger than its original 160 acres. They had also expanded from farming to breaking wild horses. They had earned the respect of their neighbors by their tenacity and their dedication to their Jewish faith. Abraham helped new farmers in the area. They were both instrumental in founding the first school in their region. Their efforts were recognized by two presidents, William Taft and Woodrow Wilson.

They spent twenty-three years on their North Dakota farm before moving to St. Paul, Minnesota. Abraham worked in dry goods there. Rachel began writing her life story, which she described as “a life worth living.”

image by LiliGraphie, deposit photos

The Calofs were married for more than fifty years. They had nine children. They both died of natural causes in their late seventies.

I think Abraham and Rachel exemplify what we think of as a mail-order marriage.

If you are enjoying this mail-order bride stories, check out Hearts West: True Stires of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier by Chris Enss.

Martha Hutchens is a transplanted southerner who lives in Los Alamos, NM where she is surrounded by history so unbelievable it can only be true. She won the 2019 Golden Heart for Romance with Religious and Spiritual Elements. A former analytical chemist and retired homeschool mom, Martha is frequently found working on her latest knitting project when she isn’t writing

Martha can frequently be found at the Sunrise Historical Hearts Facebook page, along with other Sunrise authors. If you would like to find out about new Sunrise releases (including a mail-order bride series), and meet other historical authors, click here to join the fun.