Sports Women



Mary Stuart,
Queen of Scots

 Up until the late nineteenth century, if you were a woman you were not allowed to participate in sports. When did it change?

There were always the exceptions. Women in ancient Greece were not allowed in the Olympics, so they held their own Games of Hera every four years. Mary, Queen of Scots was an avid golfer, and called her assistants “cadets”. The first caddies. During her reign (1542-67), the famous golf course of St. Andrews was built. Women in Regency times walked—Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice enjoyed a good, hardy stroll. There have been a few boxers, fisher-women, horse racers, runners, hot-air balloonists, and archers.


May in "Age of Innocence"

But until the 1870’s to 1890's mainstream women and sports didn’t mix.

The bicycle changed everything—though not because it was a way to get exercise or that it was considered a sport, but that it finally allowed women autonomy. They could move quickly from Point A to Point B by themselves. And they didn’t need a man to come along as a chaperone. I think about the feeling of freedom a woman would have felt the first time she rode a bicycle. The breeze through her hair, the exhilaration of using her limbs until they burned… And the choice involved to go somewhere. Even that. Especially that. Choice.

As bicycles gained popularity in the 1880’s, women’s clothing was adapted for ease of movement. No more bustles! As early as 1850 Amelia Bloomer developed “bloomers” to wear under a skirt, thus giving women more freedom of movement.  With bicycles, the bloomers were ends in themselves.  How risque!  Some considered women who rode bicycles whores...  Yet in the decade of 1890-1900 over a million women would ride bicycles. Beyond all the other sports, bicycling was a wide-spread hit.

During this time many sports became womanized: rowing, hiking, fencing, lawn tennis, tennis, croquet, sailing, and swimming. The summer resort of Newport, Rhode Island, encouraged all these activities.  I have some of my characters deal with bicycling, swimming, and sailing in An Unlikely Suitor. Even baseball was played by women: According to this wonderful timeline site, in 1875 two women’s teams, the "Blondes" and "Brunettes", played their first match. “Newspapers heralded the event as the 'first game of baseball ever played in public for gate money between feminine ball-tossers.'"


Boulder Field of Long's Peak

 Some of these sports didn’t require a lot of physical effort, but some did. In 1871 Addie Alexander climbed Longs Peak in Colorado. I’ve climbed Long’s Peak (the tallest peak in Rocky Mountain National Park at 14,256 feet), but I was 18 and wearing rubber-soled shoes. I can’t imagine climbing over the Boulder Field in the slippery leather-bottomed shoes of Addie’s time. Twenty-two years later, Katharine Lee Bates climbed Pike's Peak and composed a poem, “America the Beautiful.” It was set to music in 1910 by Samuel A. Ward. On top of the peak, there is a commemoration plaque.

With the doors to sports open, some women took it to extremes. In 1891 Mary French Sheldon led an expedition to East Africa. That same year Beatrice Von Dressden jumped with a parachute from a hot air balloon. This was her first jump. First? Are you kidding me? She did it again? Get this woman a place on “Fear Factor”!

Not everyone thought women should exert themselves and there were many articles condemning this change in women’s lives. Many men seemed intimidated by a strong, active woman. But in 1892, the YMCA devoted an issue to women, saying exercise for women was a good thing.

Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it! And as with most acts of freedom, I appreciate having the choice.//Nancy

Blue Cupboards and Brave Women

Have you ever read something that left you speechless? I mean jaw-droppingly-stop-reading-ponder-that-with-furrowed-brow-speechless?
Books like Women’s Diaries of the Westward Movement and Anonymous Was a Woman and Legacy and Covered Wagon Women take me into real lives that encourage and amaze me like no other kind of reading. So. . . what does that have to do with this blue cupboard?

I’m not a collector in the traditional sense of the word, but for many years now I’ve been collecting inspirational anecdotes (the ones that leave me speechless) about pioneer women. Sometimes those anecdotes inspire a book idea or a character. Sometimes they end up in this talk or that lecture. One of the anecdotes I’ve shared for years goes like this:

A woman on Plum Creek in Nebraska Territory started a store across from a pony express station. She baked as many as 100 pounds of flour a day, sold bread at 50 cents a loaf and made as much as thirty dollars per day. She made cheese which she sold at 25 cents a pound and travelers paid as much as $2 for the good meals she prepared.

And then, last year, as I was researching Sixteen Brides, I visited the Dawson County History Museum and met that unknown woman because. . . voila. . . this is her blue cupboard! Here’s the rest of her story (in brief):

Canadians Louisa and Daniel Freeman came to Nebraska by way of Michigan and Kansas, deciding to keep a store on the Oregon Trail in 1860. According to their children, the Freemans “were well acquainted with Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Two Face and Spotted Tail,” who stopped and camped near their store while on hunting trips, paying for food with hides and furs.
In 1873 the Freemans crossed a frozen river and moved their trading post to Plum Creek Station (Nebraska) where they built a two-story cedar log building and a large barn with bunks around the edges where as many as twenty travelers could spend the night for fifty cents a night. Louisa baked and made cheese and sold meals and used this blue cupboard. She also had eight children, raised a large garden, and milked cows. (And I whined today about having to go to the grocery store! Whew--shut my mouth!)

Louisa Freeman died in 1918. When I visited her grave, which overlooks the valley where she first settled in 1860, I realized that when she passed away, my own mother was five years old. Once again, I was reminded that “pioneer” life wasn’t all that long ago . . . and I have MUCH for which to be thankful. (And yes, Louisa Freeman inspired my imaginary friend Martha Haywood in Sixteen Brides.)

Here’s to blue cupboards and the women they represent and the “reality check” they can give us all when we feel overwhelmed.

Stephanie G.