This is my great great grandmother. She was born in 1866 and died at a fairly young age of 54. This photo was part of a death remembrance paper done at the time of her death. During my recent visit to my parents' home town, my aunt gave this to me. A very precious gift indeed. How many people get to see what their great great grandmother looked like? I remember my great grandmother, her daughter, well. She lived a very long life and I was grown before she passed on. Quite a character, but I am sad that I never took the time to learn about Missouri Belle or any other family history. She never mentioned it, and at the time, I never thought it important. Family lore has it that this is a line of THE Carters' of Georgia - the presidential bloodline. I haven't investigated it, yet. Given how poor most of my family were, I doubt that there is that connection.
I was curious about life in Texas during the mid to late 1800's, and I found the following rather long excerpt (Note the quote highlighted in bold further down!):
Life of Women on the 19th-century Texas Frontier
Because of the circumstances of life on the frontier, the line between the traditional roles of men and women became blurred. In order to survive on the edges of civilization, families had to be self-sufficient. Since the men were often absent rounding up cattle, hunting game or trekking a hundred or more miles to obtain flour or salt, women had to learn to do traditionally male tasks. When necessary, they cleared land, felled trees for cabins, dug wells, fought prairie fires and planted and harvested crops. And the men were called upon to do some of the household jobs usually relegated to the women, especially when their wives were ill. Some of the women settlers had already moved several times as the frontier had moved west, and they had developed the necessary survival skills. Others came from homes with servants and had to learn the basics of cooking and keeping house, as well as mastering skills new to all the settlers, such as gathering and using dried buffalo chips for fuel.
Many women on the Texas frontier lived for months without seeing another white woman. For company they had only husband, children, ranch hands and Indians. Their loneliness and isolation are the twin themes that permeate most of their accounts of life on the early Texas frontier. Susan Newcomb, a young wife and mother in Stephens County, began keeping a diary in 1865 that poignantly details the daily life of the period. In October 1864, Susan and her husband, Sam, moved into Fort Davis, a civilian picket fort built on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River to shelter more than 125 people from Indians while the Civil War was keeping many soldiers busy elsewhere. From this small community, the Newcombs moved to a ranch 18 miles away in Throckmorton County in the spring of 1866. For Sam it was not a great change: The men still went hunting, scouted for Indians, rounded up cattle and drove wagons for flour and salt in companionable groups. But Susan was isolated "18 miles from a living being ... I hope that I will not have to live out here always where I can never go to church or go to see a friend."
Entertainment on the frontier was provided by almost anything that broke the routine. The Newcombs and eight friends turned a pecan-gathering trip to nearby Paint Creek into a light-hearted five-day camp-out in October 1866. The group took with them only camping blankets, flour and butter. They killed their meat as they needed it: turkeys, rabbits and a catfish, and they gathered prickly pear fruit as well as pecans. Best of all, the women were able to renew old acquaintances and enjoy each other's company.
But these jolly expeditions were few. In May 1867, Susan summed up her feelings of isolation: "I am lonesome Oh! very lonesome . . . I actually think it is almost a sin for a person to live where they scarcely ever see anyone and are always lonesone. We have been living here over a year and there has been one woman to see us, only one."
Susan commented occasionally in her diary on the wind and the sand storms of West Texas. While it annoyed Susan to have her wash ruined by the wind-blown dirt, the constant wind sent some pioneer Texas women into deep depressions. A few were disturbed to the point of insanity, while it drove others to leave West Texas for regions that had trees. . .and gentle breezes.
Women's Softening Influences on the Frontier
The women who came to West Texas brought with them the civilizing influences of churches and schools. Small communities often had Sunday school meetings and singings, interspersed by occasional visits from ordained ministers. In Abilene, the first church service was held two weeks before the official sale of the first town lots in 1881. A school was in operation in tents later that same year. Schools were held wherever there was room until enough taxes could be raised to provide a permanent home, not only in tents, but also living rooms and warehouses. For frontier families, churches served not only as places of worship, but also as social centers, with church women organizing ice cream socials, picnics and other such activities.
The experience of women on the frontier of West Texas in the 19th century tends to prove the truth of the old Texas proverb, that it is "a great country for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses." But West Texas women for the most part stuck out the hard times and helped to tame the hostile plains.
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