By Anna Kathryn Lanier
Once again I’m turning to a book
by Chris Enss, WITH GREAT HOPE: WOMEN OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH, also written
by JoAnn Chartier. This book has a dozen
or so stories of women who went “west with great hope for the future [and] left
a legacy.” Mary Hallock went west with
great reluctance. A Quaker from New
York, Mary was already a well-established artist when she married, in great
trepidation, Arthur Foote in 1876. She had learned the intricate, difficult and
tedious artistic process of woodcarving while studying at the Cooper Union
Institute School of Design, the only art school at that time who admitted
women. Her instructor, William Linton
declared her the best wood designer at Cooper Union. It was just the beginning of praises for her
work.
Within a few years of graduating
at the age of seventeen, Mary had sold four pictures for the book Beyond the Mississippi. Ten years after leaving school, Mary was busy
illustrating books for a number of publishers, including Harper’s Weekly. She was
quite content with her life, unmarried as she was.
In 1874, she met Arthur Foote at
a party and while they conversed in private, she sketched him, unaware that he
would later be her husband. He was an
engineer who had worked at both the Tehachapi Pass and the Sutro Tunnel. He had attended Yale University’s Scientific
School until being told erroneously that his bad vision could not be corrected. Arthur dropped out two years shy of
graduating. However, he later obtained
corrective lenses and went West to seek his fortune, determined to win the
heart and hand of the woman he loved. He
conducted his courtship via letters.
Mary replied to his written declarations with extols of Eastern society
and life, making clear her intentions of remaining a successful, unmarried
artist.
A
Pretty Girl of The West (1889)
Arthur persisted though, and
returned to Boston to marry her. She
weighed carefully his proposal and finally agreed to the marriage. Shortly after they exchanged vows in her
parents’ parlor she travelled to New Almaden, California, with a commission to
illustrate a new addition of The Scarlet
Letter in hand. The western
landscaped proved a wonderful backdrop for the drawings she sent back
east.
She also sent letters to her good
friends Helena and Richard Glider.
Richard was the publisher of Scribner’s
Monthly and he pieced together some of Mary’s descriptions in a few
articles for his magazine. From there, Mary was encouraged to write stories set
in the area. The result of this was The
Led-Horse Claim about the silver boom in Colorado.
Arthur’s work had the family
moving around quite a bit during the early years of their marriage. Sometimes,
work was hard to find and it was Mary’s income from her books that sustained
the family during the rough times. At
one point, when Arthur’s business venture failed and, to make matters worse,
the bank holding his savings also collapsed in a national bank panic, he sank
into both depression and drink. It was
then that Mary took their three children and left him for a short time.
To support herself and her
children, Mary released a series of western potboilers that were not literary
masterpieces, but did the job of keeping a roof over their head and food in
their stomachs. In three years, she wrote five adult tales, two children’s
stories and several short stories. Mary
had to follow a formula (sort of like Harlequin does today) and this resulted
in works that were popular fiction but not very durable. Mary herself wasn’t overly proud of the work,
but they paid the bills during her husband’s uneven employment.
In 1895, Arthur took over as supervisor
of the North Star Mine in Grass Valley California. The couple remained there
for the next twenty years. Even with Arthur’s stable job, Mary continued to
write and draw. Life was good, until
1904, when tragedy struck. The couple’s
seventeen year old daughter died unexpectedly from complications of
appendicitis. After her daughter’s death, Mary’s writing career took a backseat
as she devoted her time and energy to her family.
However, in her later years, she produced several more
novels, including A Victorian GentleWomen
in The Far West, her memoirs. Mary
lived to the age of 90 and when she died, the woman who did not want to go west
in the first place, had her ashes buried in Grass Valley.
Anna Kathryn
Lanier
Romance Author, A GIFT BEYOND ALL MEASURE
Romance Author, A GIFT BEYOND ALL MEASURE
Never let your memories
be greater than your dreams. ~Doug Ivester
What a wonderful story. Here's another pioneer I've not heard of. She has a wonderful story, and you did a great job.
ReplyDeleteAnd she was a beauty, wasn't she? Very lovely.
Thanks!
What an amazing woman Mary was, Anna. Thanks for sharing her story. I love learning about our foremothers. It's so maddening to me that higher education was prohibited so so many women in the not that distant past. Grrrr. Pioneers like Mary sure paved the way for the rest of us. I am eager to read the books you mentioned. Hugs...
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to be so late commenting. I was so impressed by the talent of Mary and how she wasn't all that interested in becoming married, especially considering the time period. Isn't it amazing how we end up in places doing things we never dreamed of in our youth?
ReplyDeleteThis was such an interesting blog, Anna.
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