A Governor's Wife on the Mining Frontier

📖 The Scoop

In 1863 Mary Wright Edgerton left her home, family, and friends in Ohio to follow her husband 2,500 miles to the western gold fields, to the very edge of civilization. Her husband, Sidney, was appointed territorial chief justice of Idaho, then governor of Montana Territory.

Though not as dangerous as contemporary western fiction sometimes portrays it, the trip was arduous. When the family settled in Bannock on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, it was a primitive mining camp. Mary had spent much of her life in a large house surrounded by family and friends. Now she was confined to a small log cabin with a leaky dirt roof and inadequate hearing. Of the few women in Bannock, fewer still were genteel. It was a town of men seeking a quick fortune and women who catered to them.

When Sidney traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for territorial issues, Mary stayed behind with their young daughter. During such periods she would write about her experiences, vividly describing her journeys and episodes of frontier life. She was witness to several of the most important developments in Montana's history; her letters home to Ohio provide significant information and intriguing insights into a woman's perspective, an area where documentation is scarce and her letters therefore fill a conspicuous gap.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / General (fancy, right?)