Helga Estby Project: Based on "Bold Spirit"

Linda Lawrence Hunt wrote an amazing book called "Bold Spirit." It's a non-fiction book about Helga Estby and her daughter's walk cross the country in 1896. While the book is called non-fiction, it's a different sort of non-fiction book. You see, the Estby women left very little record of their trip. Ms. Hunt went to newspaper sources from the towns she visited to learn about the trip. While the newspaper articles tell us what they saw, a lot of Ms. Hunt's efforts went into surmising what it was like for the women. Our class is also interested in learning about the people and places they saw, contemplating what the women might have felt, and trying to learn broad lessons about life in 1896 as well as how some stories are "forgotten by history."   This story will provide a brief summary of the book. If you click on the links, the 4 th grade students will provide you with more in depth information as well as relevant pictures. Enjoy.

Helga Estby was a Norwegian immigrant. She grew up in Minnesota on the northern edge of the Great Plains.   Life was extremely difficult there. Families lived in sod houses.

Immigrants weren't the only settlers. Poor children from Eastern cities were brought to the Plains on orphan trains. Life was difficult for all.

Helga and her husband decided to move to a new city, Spokane, Washington. Life continued to be extremely difficult. The parents and their eight children were always starving. Helga heard about a challenge: A mysterious New Yorker was offering $10,000 to a woman who would walk across the United States wearing a new style bicycle dress. Most women in those days wore very constraining Victorian dresses.

The women had to walk the whole way, and had to start with no more than five dollars in her pocket. Helga and her teenage daughter, Clara, set off on the journey, leaving her husband alone to take care of the seven other children, including two infants.

They were attempting the first walk across the country by females, whom everyone thought were too fragile for anything like a cross-country trip. Their trip would be something like that of Narcissa Whitman, who was the first female to cross the country on a Conestoga wagon. It would also be something like that of the Pony Express riders who rode in all weather across the U.S.A.

The trip couldn't have been easy. The women carried a Smith and Wesson gun to protect themselves from animals or criminals. They had to use the gun once on a man, though their biggest fear was Diamondback Snakes.  

Another thing they had to fear was people's attitudes. Wyoming was the only state that let women vote. Many people thought it shocking that Helga would leave her children at home. She thought she didn't have a choice. She had once heard Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton speak. These women's rights leaders must have influenced her thinking.

The two women started their trip by going through the Umatillo Indian Reservation. By this time, most Native-Americans were on reservations. Most of the time, they followed the tracks of the new Trans-Continental railroad.   Often, they were able to sleep in stations and work houses along the way.

Mountains and weather were two of their biggest challenges. They had to cross the Rocky Mountains, and the Appalachian Mountains. At times, they followed the route of the old Oregon Trail.   Believe it or not, they didn't have coats.

When they got to cities, they had to stop their progress. They would sell pictures of themselves and do odd jobs to make money. Among the cities they passed through were Salt Lake City, where they saw the Great Salt Lake and Chicago. Chicago looked pretty new since so much of it had just been rebuilt after the Chicago Fire. When they crossed the Mississsippi River, more than halfway across the country, they felt like they were home-free.

Along the way, they met some very famous and interesting people. They traveled through the Amish country in Ohio and Pennsylvania. They met William Jennings Bryan who was running for president, and his opponent, William McKinley.   They probably knew of President Grover Cleveland 's words, "The best place for a woman to patronize is her home."

In the towns they went through, they undoubtedly heard about the issues of the day. One of the issues was the Supreme Court decision called " Plessy vs. Ferguson."   People also talked about Coxie's Army.   The rights of women, African-Americans, and union workers were on everyone's minds. One woman who did more than talk about rights for people was Jane Addams. It's possible that they met her, too.

The Estby women made it to New York just in time for Christmas in 1896. Unfortunately, the sponsor, who had always been something of a mystery, never paid the women the money. So, they had to work to earn money to get back. While they were trying to earn enough money, they learned that two of the children back home in Spokane had died of diphtheria.

They finally did make it home. Are you surprised to hear that Helga wasn't considered to be a hero? In fact, she was more often considered a disgrace for leaving her children. Though she did write a memoir many years later, her relatives discarded it. She was something of a black sheep.

With the help of a relative, a young history student, and of course, Ms. Hunt, we've begun to learn more of Helga and Clara's trip. As you can see, there's a lot to learn. Like most good stories, there's a lot left to our imaginations. What must it have been like to have been Helga Estby?