My Ever Dear Charlie: Letters Home from the Dakota Territory - Tapa blanda

Alone but for six children ages one to fourteen in her 16 foot by 20 foot soddy, Fanny Draper kept her husband in Missouri apprised of conditions on the prairie during one of the worst winters in memory, the hard winter of 1886. This collection of letters, family photographs, and other illustrations paints a picture of a woman who went from hosting parties in Washington DC for her congressman father to surviving the homestead experience in the west. Available as a collection for the first time, this is a welcome addition to the chronicle of the west for history readers.

I simply don't know what to say under my disappointment. . . . I want to do what is right and am willing to stay here as long as you think best, but it is simply dreadful. . . . No provision store near, no potatoes, no nothing and everything desolate indeed.
" Fannie Draper in a letter to her husband Charlie, July 1886
As a young hostess for her Congressman father in Washington, D.C., Fannie McClurg never would have imagined the year she would spend caring for six children in a small sod shanty on the Dakota plains.
In an ambitious gesture toward starting a large-scale ranching and farming enterprise in the West, the Draper and McClurg families vowed to take advantage of the 1862 Homestead Act, which required living on and working the land for a period of time. Charlie Draper would remain in Missouri, financially supporting the family as a banker. His wife, Fannie, and their children, ages one to fourteen, would stake a claim on homestead property. As if their soddy wasn't bleak enough in summer, along came the famously hard winter of 1886-1887, with snow starting in November and sub-zero temperatures persisting through March. In My Ever Dear Charlie, the family's inspiring story-available for the first time in print-is told through authentic letters, photographs, and illustrations.