OVERVIEW

A typical Frontier Army wife came from the upper middle class. She adapted to the harsh, often hostile environment and the frequent separations and moves. She brought her civilizing influence to bear on isolated posts and to the men stationed there.

Despite having to endure low pay and near constant indebtedness, being ranked out of quarters on little or no notice and lack of fresh food and accustomed comforts, the Frontier Army wife is aptly described as "a kind of tough, weather proof, India-rubber woman. Serene and unruffled in all situations."

The hardships were a fact of life in the West, but preferred to the alternative. "It is infinitely worse to be left behind, a prey to all the horrors of imagining what may happen to one you love. You eat your heart out with anxiety, and to endure such suspense is simply the hardest of all trials that come to a soldier's wife." And so, these valiant women came to the frontier and found that their lives were filled with the extended family of an Army post.

Life on an Army post was filled with diversions. Entertaining both new arrivals and visitors and neighbors was a constant activity when the troops were in garrison. Also popular while the men were home were fishing, dancing, picnicking, and shooting.

On days that the soldiers were gone the officers' wives spent their time with less strenuous pursuits. Activities such as sewing bees, riding, teas, and card parties were the rule of the day.

Socially, Army wives were generally from upper-middle-class families. Assuming the majority were educated, why then were they almost "invisible" as a group? One answer may lie in the education itself.

They had been educated as gentlewomen in the prevailing school of thought that began in the early decades of settlement in America. Known as the "cult of true womanhood," teaching demanded that a woman be pious, submissive, uncomplaining, supportive, and educated in the genteel and domestic arts. She should not compete with men in any way. As the moral guardian of her home, she should shield the family from the undesirable elements of a materialistic society.

In the 1820s and 1830s, essays, novels, school texts, sermons, and ladies' periodicals, such as Godey's Lady's Book, stressed the importance of a woman's "sphere" of influence. Although women were physically weaker and possibly mentally inferior to men, they were morally superior and thus equal to men within their separate sphere. Women were to remain behind the scenes, with only the results of their work showing, not the process. To use a trite phrase, women were to "be seen and not heard."

In the 1840s, the images of the frail and delicate lady and the sedentary life of confinement that produced her, went out of fashion. Women were encouraged to "go forth into the fields and woods" for walks of at least two miles a day, and to be more conscious of their health and diet, thus enabling them to perform their moral duties and responsibilities more effectively. In the mid-1840s, Godey's Lady's Book began to publish articles featuring heroic women of the American Revolution. One of the authors wrote, "The women of that era were equal to the crisis, for they contributed active assistance, by the labor of their hands; by the sacrifice of their luxuries;" and "by the surrender of what had been deemed necessaries."

The officer's wife seemed to embrace the 1830s school of thought; she followed her husband to the frontier out of a sense of love, duty, and the desire to provide her family with a comfortable home no matter where it was of how crude the surroundings. In this case, if an officer's wife wanted to live up to the ideals of true womanhood, she had to go with her husband to achieve them. The self-sufficiency required in frontier society lent itself to the newer school of thought. Though probably not overly concerned about which school was popular at the time; it appears the wives were able to move easily between both. They were, it would seem, products of their natural and social environments.

The text on this page was taken from a publication, The Girl I Left Behind Me (used by permission), produced by staff at the Frontier Army Museum in Fort Leavenworth: and Sabers and Soapsuds: Dragoon Women on the Frontier by Dana Prater(used by permission.