Download or read book Notorious Women of Old California written by Robin C. Johnson and published by California Venture Books. This book was released on 2021-09 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early California had its share of colorful residents, men and women alike. After gold was discovered in the largely uninhabited territory in 1849, people flooded in from around the world to seek their fortune, building a bustling international population in accelerated time. It was the natural place for unconventional types to thrive, and the first 50 years of California statehood produced more than its share of fascinating characters, many of them female. For instance, there's Madame Mustache who was a first-rate gambler known throughout the West for her agile fingers at vingt-et-un and the dark line of hair on her upper lip. There was Jeanne Bonnet, a French cross-dresser who caught and sold frogs for a living and launched a crusade to single-handedly liberate prostitutes from their pimps. Sadly, she was murdered, inspiring the never-solved "San Miguel Mystery." And what about the Countess de Henriot who sashayed into San Francisco's Palace Hotel one day with a dozen trunks and servants in tow? She served prospective husbands fine champagne and caviar and let them fawn all over her for months...until somebody started asking questions about her origins. There are these and many more eccentric personalities to discover in this compendium of notorious women of old California, from swindlers to performers to murderers and beyond.
Download or read book America s Best Female Sharpshooter written by Julia Bricklin and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, most remember “California Girl” Lillian Frances Smith (1871–1930) as Annie Oakley’s chief competitor in the small world of the Wild West shows’ female shooters. But the two women were quite different: Oakley’s conservative “prairie beauty” persona clashed with Smith’s tendency to wear flashy clothes and keep company with the cowboys and American Indians she performed with. This lively first biography chronicles the Wild West showbiz life that Smith led and explores the talents that made her a star. Drawing on family records, press accounts, interviews, and numerous other sources, historian Julia Bricklin peels away the myths that enshroud Smith’s fifty-year career. Known as “The California Huntress” before she was ten years old, Smith was a professional sharpshooter by the time she reached her teens, shooting targets from the back of a galloping horse in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West. Not only did Cody offer $10,000 to anyone who could beat her, but he gave her top billing, setting the stage for her rivalry with Annie Oakley. Being the best female sharpshooter in the United States was not enough, however, to differentiate Lillian Smith from Oakley and a growing number of ladylike cowgirls. So Smith reinvented herself as “Princess Wenona,” a Sioux with a violent and romantic past. Performing with Cody and other showmen such as Pawnee Bill and the Miller brothers, Smith led a tumultuous private life, eventually taking up the shield of a forged Indian persona. The morals of the time encouraged public criticism of Smith’s lack of Victorian femininity, and the press’s tendency to play up her rivalry with Oakley eventually overshadowed Smith’s own legacy. In the end, as author Julia Bricklin shows, Smith cared more about living her life on her own terms than about her public image. Unlike her competitors who shot to make a living, Lillian Smith lived to shoot.
Download or read book The Kitchen God s Wife written by Amy Tan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Remarkable...mesmerizing...compelling.... An entire world unfolds in Tolstoyan tide of event and detail....Give yourself over to the world Ms. Tan creates for you." —The New York Times Book Review Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past—including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events that led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949. The Kitchen God's Wife is "a beautiful book" (Los Angeles Times) from the bestselling author of novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Backyard Bird Chronicles, and the memoir, Where the Past Begins.
Download or read book Outlaw Tales of California written by Chris Enss and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Massacres, mayhem, and mischief fill the pages of Outlaw Tales of California 2, with compelling legends of the Golden State's most despicable desperadoes. Ride with horse thieves and cattle rustlers, duck the bullets of murderers, plot strategies with con artists, and hiss at lawmen turned outlaws.
Download or read book Wicked Women written by Chris Enss and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-02-20 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled-doves, and other wicked women by offers a glimpse into Western Women’s experience that's less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. Pulling together stories of ladies caught in the acts of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, it will include famous names like Belle Starr and Big Nose Kate, as well as lesser known characters.
Download or read book Women Trailblazers of California written by Gloria G Harris and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2011-11-16 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of biographical profiles, this volume celebrates the lives and achievements of women who made history in the Golden State. Throughout California’s history, remarkable women have been at the core of change and innovation. In this fascinating volume, Gloria Harris and Hannah Cohen relate the stories of forty women whose struggles and achievements have paved the way for generations. Coming from all walks of life and entering a variety of fields—from activism and conservation to science, medicine, entertainment, and more—these women overcame prejudice, skepticism and injustice to prove that women can do anything. Visionary architect Julia Morgan designed Hearst Castle; Dolores Huerta co-founded United Farm Workers; Donaldina Cameron, the angry angel of Chinatown, rescued brothel workers; and silent film actress Mary Pickford helped form United Artists Pictures. From fearless pioneers to determined reformers, Harris and Cohen chronicle the triumphs and disappointments of diverse women who dared to take risks and break down barriers.
Download or read book Remarkable Women of California written by marilyn deyoung and published by . This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Golden State has attracted and created more than its share of illustrious, talented and provocative women. Prominent Californian and history buff, Marilyn Brant Chandler DeYoung has spent a lifetime developing friendships with many of these famous and not so famous women, and nearly thirty years capturing their stories. Using historical references, personal interviews, as well as her own personal recollections, DeYoung has crafted an insider's view of these influential women's lives. Her vivid biographies and photos of the ladies give a distinct social history to the women's movement and the growth of California. From philanthropists to athletes, performers and politician, entrepreneurs and educators, First Ladies and writers, Mrs. DeYoung uniquely brings eighty-two 19th and 20th century women to life in her book, Remarkable Women of California.
Download or read book Re Dressing America s Frontier Past written by Peter Boag and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans have long cherished romantic images of the frontier and its colorful cast of characters, where the cowboys are always rugged and the ladies always fragile. But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing—for both men and women—was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities. Boag asks, why has this history been forgotten and erased? Citing a cultural moment at the turn of the twentieth century—when the frontier ended, the United States entered the modern era, and homosexuality was created as a category—Boag shows how the American people, and thus the American nation, were bequeathed an unambiguous heterosexual identity.
Download or read book Women Winemakers written by Lucia Albino Gilbert and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The passion, courage, and talent of women making their way in a male-dominated field are captured through conversations with women winemakers from throughout California and wine regions of France, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain. Their stories are told through the lens of four career pathways and the cultural histories of each wine region.
Download or read book My Notorious Life written by Kate Manning and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Exquisitely written and richly detailed, My Notorious Life is a marvel. Kate Manning’s rags-to-riches Dickensian saga brings to vivid life the world of nineteenth-century New York City, in all its pitiful squalor and glittering opulence. I loved this novel.” —Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train A brilliant rendering of a scandalous historical figure, Kate Manning’s My Notorious Life is an ambitious, thrilling novel introducing Axie Muldoon, a fiery heroine for the ages. Axie’s story begins on the streets of 1860s New York. The impoverished child of Irish immigrants, she grows up to become one of the wealthiest and most controversial women of her day. In vivid prose, Axie recounts how she is forcibly separated from her mother and siblings, apprenticed to a doctor, and how she and her husband parlay the sale of a few bottles of “Lunar Tablets for Female Complaint” into a thriving midwifery business. Flouting convention and defying the law in the name of women’s reproductive rights, Axie rises from grim tenement rooms to the splendor of a mansion on Fifth Avenue, amassing wealth while learning over and over never to trust a man who says “trust me.” When her services attract outraged headlines, Axie finds herself on a collision course with a crusading official—Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It will take all of Axie’s cunning and power to outwit him in the fight to preserve her freedom and everything she holds dear. Inspired by the true history of an infamous female physician who was once called “the Wickedest Woman in New York,” My Notorious Life is a mystery, a family saga, a love story, and an exquisitely detailed portrait of nineteenth-century America. Axie Muldoon’s inimitable voice brings the past alive, and her story haunts and enlightens the present.
Download or read book Woman of Spain written by Scott O'Dell and published by . This book was released on 1934 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tales Behind the Tombstones written by Chris Enss and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007-07-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tales Behind the Tombstones tells the stories behind the deaths (or supposed deaths) and burials of the Old West's most nefarious outlaws, notorious women, and celebrated lawmen. Readers will learn the story behind Calamity Jane's wish to be buried next to Wild Bill Hickok, discover how and where the Earp brothers came to be buried, and visit the sites of tombs long forgotten while legends have lived on.
Download or read book Love Lessons from the Old West written by Chris Enss and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Calamity Jane’s relentless pursuit of Wild Bill Hickok to Emma Walters, who gave it all up for the dashing Bat Masterson—and learned to regret it, these romantic stories from the Old West are still familiar and entertaining to readers today. Meet Agnes Lake Hickok, the intrepid wife of Wild Bill Hickok and learn about the last love letter he sent before being dealt the dead man’s hand. Learn the story behind the charming performer Lotta Crabtree’s heartaches. And discover the tale of the dashing Kit Carson and his beautiful bride. This collection features the lessons learned by and from the antics of the women who shaped the West.
Download or read book A Frontier Lady written by Sarah Royce and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1977-01-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since it was first published in 1932, A Frontier Lady has held a high and special place in the literature of Americas westward migration. Written in the 1880s at the request of her son, the philosopher and educator Josiah Royce, Sarah Royce's narrative of the family odyssey across the continent and of their early years in California is also the portrait of a remarkable woman. In the words of her daughter-in-law, "Wherever she was, she made civilization, even when it seemed that she had little indeed from which to make it."
Download or read book None Wounded None Missing All Dead written by Howard Kazanjian and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 17, 1876, Elizabeth Bacon Custer kissed her husband George goodbye and wished him good fortune in his efforts to fulfill the Army’s orders to drive in the Native Americans who would not willingly relocate to a reservation. Adorned in a black taffeta dress and a velvet riding cap with a red peacock feather that matched George’s red scarf, she watched the proud regiment ride off. It was a splendid picture. This new biography of Elizabeth Bacon Custer relates the story of the famous and dashing couple's romance, reveals their life of adventure throughout the west during the days of the Indian Wars, and recounts the tragic end of the 7th cavalry and the aftermath for the wives. Libbie Custer was an unusual woman who followed her itinerant army husband's career to its end--but she was also an amazing master of propaganda who tried to recreate George Armstrong Custer's image after Little Bighorn. The author of many books about her own life (some of which are still in print) she was one of the most famous women of her time and remains a fascinating character in American history.
Download or read book The Pinks written by Chris Enss and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-07-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of Kate Warne and the other women who served as Pinkertons, fulfilling the adage, “Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History.” Most students of the Old West and American law enforcement history know the story of the notorious and ruthless Pinkerton Detective Agency and the legends behind their role in establishing the Secret Service and tangling with Old West Outlaws. But the true story of Kate Warne, an operative of the Pinkerton Agency and the first woman detective in America—and the stories of the other women who served their country as part of the storied crew of crime fighters—are not well known. For the first time, the stories of these intrepid women are collected here and richly illustrated throughout with numerous historical photographs. From Kate Warne’s probable affair with Allan Pinkerton, and her part in saving the life of Abraham Lincoln in 1861 to the lives and careers of the other women who broke out of the Cult of True Womanhood in pursuit of justice, these true stories add another dimension to our understanding of American history.
Download or read book Bedside Book of Bad Girls written by Michael Rutter and published by Farcountry Press. This book was released on 2012-07-23 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet Kate Bender, who brutally murdered as many as thirty people in Kansas, including children, and buried them in her family's orchard; Laura Bullion, the only woman to participate in a Wild Bunch train robbery; and Madam Vestal, a one-time Confederate spy who organized the famous Deadwood stagecoach robberies. Witness the execution of Elizabeth Potts and Ellen Watson, the first women hanged in Nevada and Wyoming. Drawing on fact and folklore, author and historian Michael Rutter brings 21 gun-slinging "bad girls" to life, and explores their motives, hopes, and dreams. He dispels many of the myths about these female outlaws, for sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Featuring forty-two historical images, Bedside Book of Bad Girls sheds light on figures and events often shrouded in fabrication and fantasy. Meet these fascinating characters, complete with their pistols and petticoats, their knives and knaves, their vices and victims.
