Sex Roles and Work Patterns among Homesteading Families in Northeastern Colorado, 1873-1920

Abstract

Much of the recent historiography describing women on the agricultural frontier has produced a bleak picture of their condition. According to these interpretations, women were coerced and exploited as participants in a venture undertaken primarily for the benefit of men.1 My study of homesteaders in Washington and Logan Counties in northeastern Colorado does not support this conclusion.2 In the years between 1873 and 1920, thousands of individuals and families worked to establish claims under the homestead laws. Women were significantly represented among the land entrants, and their rate of success was approximately the same as men's.3 Among the female population, however, only spinsters and widows were eligible to enter claims, so that other aspects of the homesteading experience must also be explored to gain a broader understanding of its effect on women. One of these, the impact of pioneering on gender-linked work and behavior patterns, is the subject of this paper.4 For the white, native-born (that is, nonimmigrant) Americans making up the bulk of the migration to northeastern Colorado, culturally prescribed rules of behavior derived from nineteenth-century eastern, urban, middleand upper middle-class models of propriety. An historian of American women, Barbara Welter, has labeled this ideal the of True Womanhood, noting its emphasis on the role of women in maintaining harmonious relations between the sexes. Yet the Cult was prescriptive for men as well. Ideally both sexes confined their activities to separate spheres. Women were to occupy themselves with the moral and practical issues related to nurturing children and managing the home. They were also to cultivate personal qualities of purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness to better meet the needs of husbands, fathers, and children. Men, on the other hand, were to restrict their actions largely to the world of wage work and public affairs. They were expected to be aggressive and competitive, and not too concerned with moral issues, for men were generally thought to possess spiritual natures intrinsically inferior to women's.5 There is some question as to when, where, and how completely the Cult of True Womanhood was assimilated by native, white agrarians. A study of mid-nineteenthcentury midwestern migrants on the Overland Trail found no evidence of the Cult's penetration into their lives. Instead, these families were organized along preindustrial, patriarchal lines with women dominated by men in nearly all aspects of their lives.6 Nonetheless, the evidence is strong that during the latter half of the nineteenth century, midwestern farm families became well acquainted with the Cult's ideals. Popular magazines, books, and newspapers with a wide circulation through much of rural America carried countless articles and advice columns stressing women's domestic responsibilities as mothers of children and helpmates to husbands.7 It was the role of helpmate that made the urban Cult of True Womanhood compatible with the farm economy. As their husbands' helpers, women could work outside their proper sphere and still maintain the integrity of the ideal. There is little doubt that northeastern Colorado's homesteaders were familiar with the behavioral prescriptions broadcast by the popular press. Most of the immigrants' families of origin were midwestern agrarians. Those whose roots were urban were even more likely to have assimilated these ideals. Eastern social customs and styles were evident in the way many settlers lived. And eastern-based churches, clubs, and lodges distinguished frontier town life at an early date.8 While it appears certain that homesteaders were familiar with eastern notions of propriety, how completely they acted on them before migrating west is open to question.