E.A. Van Court

In this memoir, Mrs. E.A. Van Court remembers her family's life in California between 1856 and 1864. During this period the Van Court's worked on a number of farms and ranches, mostly raising dairy cattle. Disease, floods, theft, and government dispossession led to failure in each venture. Van Court's writings show the mental and emotional stress that frontier life put on the settlers. She was overworked, isolated, and lonely. She had very little support especially during several childbirths. She had many fears and anxieties over bears, rattlesnakes, Indians, family illness and money—all with good reason. She even feared she was close to mental breakdown and suicide. Yet as she looked back on her life, a survivor at age eighty-two, she was proud of her accomplishments and at last "living a very comfortable, contented, peaceful...