ABSTRACT
At the age of 87 Jennie Osborn was just learning to use her new typewriter when she recorded her memories. She demonstrated that adventurous young women on the frontier had a wide range of options: she taught school, she tried the millinery business for awhile, she hauled young fruit trees to Texas—sometimes teaching part of the year and hauling trees in the summer. The excerpt below begins with her marriage in 1874 and delineates the ups and downs of farming over three decades. The Osborns were continuously plagued with problems: they tried raising sheep but that venture failed; they tried raising wheat and that too failed. Because they were always “starting over” she said “It seems to me that I was nearly always a pioneer.” This is her message: “All this I have written may not be interesting to some who may chance to read it in the years to come, but it is a part of the memories stored away in my brain for over eighty years, and for what purpose, I do not know. Perhaps it is to show that, with good health and energy, we can conquer most any hardship if we have the stick-to-it-iveness in our constitution. This is required. Well, we stuck. We could not have left without sacrificing what little we had, so we determined not to yield, but to conquer “hardship.” (42)
