Topics in Kansas History: Community & Daily Life

Essay on Women

During the frontier period in Kansas history, women joined their husbands in establishing homesteads across the state. Many were reluctant to leave their friends and family while others saw homesteading as a challenging new adventure. One such woman was Flora Moorman Heston. She wrote in her diary in 1885, "I think we will be as happy as birds in a home of our own out west."

Whether traveling by covered wagon or train, women carefully packed all the necessities for good housekeeping that they would need in their new home. Supplies were often scarce and expensive on the frontier.

Making a home liveable was one of a woman's principal duties. Ususally small, dark, and drafty, log cabins were a challenge to even the best housekeeper.

In central and western Kansas, sod houses and dugouts were the first residences for many homesteaders. Credited with being warm in the winter and cool in the summer, soddies also had their share of discomforts. Dirt, bugs, mice, and snakes frequented the roof, often sending a shower of debris upon the inhabitants. One woman remembered a dinner during which a snake fell from the ceiling onto the meat platter. This unpleasant event, unfortunately, was not an isolated incident.

Leaky roofs were a common feature of both soddies and dugouts. One homemaker recalled that when it rained, water "sometimes rose almost to the ticks (mattresses) on the bed." Others were known to work with an umbrella over their head.

Soddies and dugouts were generally small, some measuring just 10 feet by 12 feet. For some families, living space was extremely limited. Many settlers had fewer and cruder furnishings. Packing crates, barrels, and rough cottonwood boards often served as the first furnishings.

Because of the limited space indoors and lack of light, women did as much of their work as possible out-of-doors. In good weather, this even included taking a meal outside.

Sod houses usually were sparsely furnished. Most homemakers, while working to make their soddie comfortable, considered it a temporary home until a more substantial stone or frame house could be built.

On the frontier homesteaders faced many hardships. Isolation was one tribulation endured primarily by women. Their responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, sewing, washing, and supervising the children kept them on the farm. Many were left alone for days and weeks while their husbands made business trips to town or took on other jobs, such as hauling freight or breaking sod, to supplement the family income.

To break the solitude of rural life, women would travel miles for female companionship.

Maintaining a farmstead required long hours of work for men, women, and children. Women participated in many farm chores as well as tending to their domestic tasks.

Gathering buffalo chips was a common activity on the plains. They were used as fuel in place of scarce wood and expensive coal. Readily available, they also made a quick, hot fire, reportedly with little odor.

A Meade County editor wrote in 1879: "It was comical to see how gingerly our wives handled these chips at first. They commenced by picking them up between two sticks, or with a poker. Soon they used a rag, and then a corner of their apron. Finally, growing hardened, a wash after handling them was sufficient. Now it is out of the bread, into the chips and back again-- and not even a dust of the hands!"

Selling butter, eggs, and bread and taking in washing, especially for bachelor homesteaders, were ways women supplemented the family income.

The first washday for a Clark County woman in 1885 was a frustrating and comical experience. "The first day I washed, it was terribly windy, & I had no lines stretched. I had to spread them on the grass. Just as soon as I would let go of them they would blow up into a wad, so I got mad after awhile & took the pan of cloths & give them a big [throw] in the air, & they came down in as good shape as if I had spread them, but they soon dried then they commenced blowing away. A couple of didies [underwear] started, & George [her young son] after them, he run about a quarter of a mile, & started back a crying, but the didies went on."

Although some women continued the practice of spinning and weaving fabric, most purchased inexpensive manufactured cottons and wools.

Cooking for the large crews during harvest was a major undertaking for the farm wife and her daughters.

In the 19th century, many young women were encouraged to enter the teaching profession. Kansas needed teachers and it was considered a respectable occupation for single women. The pay scale for women in all jobs continued to be lower than that of their male counterparts.

Opportunities for women to work outside the home increased as businesses and factories developed in Kansas towns. Some women owned their own businesses but most labored in service-oriented jobs for others.

Since most middle-class married women did not work outside the home during this period, the female work force consisted mainly of young or single women.

In the 19th century, many middle and upper- class women employed domestics to help with the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and child care.

The equal-voting-rights issue captured the attention of many Kansas women in the 19th century. Having earned the right to vote in school district elections in 1861 and municipal elections in 1887, they continued to lobby for totally equal suffrage. In 1912, Kansas became the eighth state to grant full suffrage to women.

On the national level, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 provided all women with the right to vote in every election.

Women's clubs were a standard feature of most Kansas towns. Literary, musical, and sewing clubs were organized in great numbers, as were clubs that centered around service to others. Often these clubs had overlapping interests as exemplified by a Cawker City club. Its aims were to "maintain a public library, and interest women in literature."

Many women continued their charitable work for others by serving in the Red Cross during World War I.

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