Women and Men on the Overland Trail Second Edition

by Faragher, John Mack

• ISBN13: 9780300089240
• ISBN10: 0300089244
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This classic book offers a lively and penetrating analysis of what the overland journey was really like for midwestern farm families in the mid-1800s. Through the subtle use of contemporary diaries, memoirs, and even folk songs, John Mack Faragher dispels the common stereotypes of male and female roles and reveals the dynamic of pioneer family relationships. This edition includes a new preface in which Faragher looks back on the social context in which he formulated his original thesis and provides a new supplemental bibliography. Praise for the earlier edition: "Faragher has made excellent use of the Overland Trail materials, using them to illuminate the society the emigrants left as well as the one they constructed en route. His study should be important to a wide range of readers, especially those interested in family history, migration and western history, and women's history." --Kathryn Kish Sklar "An enlightening study."--American West "A helpful study which not only illuminates the daily life of rural Americans but which also begins to compensate for the male orientation of so much of western history." --Journal of Social History Winner of the 1980 Frederick Jackson Turner Award offered by the Organization of American Historians John Mack Faragher, Arthur Unobskey Professor of History at Yale University, is also the author ofSugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie andcoauthor with Robert V. Hine ofThe American West: A New Interpretive History,both published by Yale University Press.

Author Biography

John Mack Faragher is Arthur Unobskey Professor of History at Yale University.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	ix
Preface to the Second Edition	xi
Preface	xxi
Introduction: Perspectives, Setting, Sources	1	(15)
The Overland Emigrants	16	(24)
The Midwestern Farming Family, 1850	40	(26)
Men's and Women's Work on the Overland Trail	66	(22)
Masculine Men and Feminine Women	88	(22)
The Separate Worlds of Men and Women	110	(34)
The World of the Family	144	(35)
Conclusion: Men and Women in the Rural American West	179	(10)
Appendix I Tables	189	(9)
Appendix II Notes on Method	198	(6)
Notes	204	(43)
Selected Bibliography	247	(30)
Supplemental Bibliography	277	(4)
Index	281