Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Elinore answered it (with the agreement of Mrs.

In early 1909, Henry Clyde Stewart (1868–1948), a widower, placed an advertisement in The Denver Post for a housekeeper to help on his homestead near Burntfork, Wyoming. Juliet Coney, a widowed schoolteacher from Boston, Massachusetts. She then relocated to Denver, Colorado, where she worked as a laundress, and then in permanent employment as housekeeper for Mrs. He died in a railroad accident before their daughter Mary Jerrine was born (February 10, 1906, reportedly in Oklahoma City). In 1893, her mother died of complications from childbirth, and in 1894, her stepfather died in a work accident, leaving the orphaned Elinore responsible for her younger siblings, with only her grandparents available for support.Īround 1902, she married Harry Cramer Rupert, then 48 years old. Elinore was educated for a few years at Pierce Institute near White Bead Hill until that grammar school closed in 1889. Shortly afterwards, her mother, Josephine Courtney Pruitt, married her husband's brother, Thomas Isaac Pruitt, and bore eight more children. Her father died in the late 1870s on Army service near the Mexican border. The first of those collections, Letters of a Woman Homesteader, was the basis of the 1979 movie Heartland.Įlinore Pruitt was born on June 3, 1876, in White Bead Hill, then a settlement in Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, and as of 2016 is an abandoned township in Garvin County, Oklahoma (founded 1906). Those letters, which reveal an adventurous, capable, and resourceful woman of lively intelligence, were published in two collections in 19. Elinore Pruitt Stewart (born Elinore Pruitt June 3, 1876 – October 8, 1933) was a homesteader in Wyoming, and a memoirist who between 19 wrote letters describing her life there to a former employer in Denver, Colorado.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart