Step back in time a century. Mary Agnew tells of her homestead life in Wallace County, Kansas, with clarity and wit.

Born in 1894 in Alabama, child of a Civil War soldier, she built a sod house, learned in a one-room schoolhouse, and enjoyed community gatherings, and country dances.

She gardened for food, cooked on a stove using cow chips for fuel, nursed her neighbors through the flu pandemic of 1918, chuckled at antics in a Model T, and hid home-brew from revenuers during Prohibition. Life was hard -- and filled with joy and dignity.

Based on Mary's journals, this biography includes 132 historic photographs and 53 family recipes.

The Woman From Short Grass Country has received The Colorado Independent Publishers Association Merit Award in History, a Merit Award in Printing and 2nd place award in Book Design.

As Life Goes On

A lot of work and a little play,
A neighbor to pass the time of day,
These make the wheels of contentment roll
And help to satisfy the soul.
Build for the future, forget the past.
Its troubles were like a stormy blast
Gone with the darkness of the night,
Leaving a world more fair and bright.
Only the hardened scar remains,
Like burned over forest or desolate plains.
Then God in his mercy looks down from above
And sheds on my heart his infinite love,
Erasing all trace of the stormy past,
Renewing beautiful hope that will last.

Mary Agnew, 1945

The journals of my grandmother, Mary Agnew, provided the foundation for this book. Her writings were in longhand, from one edge of each lined page to the other, without sentence structures or paragraphs, and all the pages were scotch-taped into four scrolls.

Her spoken English was good; her written English showed the limitations of her third-grade education. When Grandma showed me what she had written, I pulled out my typewriter (it was 1978) and started typing. I then cut the pages into strips,and taped the pieces together into chronological sequences and coherent thought. I also asked her lots of questions and together we filled in many pieces. Her children, grandchildren, and neighbors added more. I did research to fill in the rest.

Grandma’s recipes were a challenge. Most were either word of mouth or just a list of ingredients. She thought it funny that I wanted measurements when I cooked.

After Grandma’s death in 1979,motherhood and a career took my attention; so the manuscript sat untouched in my file cabinet for years.

In 1995, I found some of Grandma’s things in an out-building on the farm she created. Among the dishes, craft projects, and other items, were three picture albums and a mouse-eaten box. Inside, carefully labeled, were a collection of pictures. Many are included in this book.

In 2004, I put the manuscript on my computer and worked on it again. I tried to write so my children would understand. Now,I am finally keeping my promise to publish her life story, the story of a pioneer woman who lived through an era that was very different from our modern lives in the Twenty-first Century.

I’ve learned a great deal writing these stories; not only about life in early western Kansas, but about myself. I’m proud to have descended from a woman who took adventure and adversity in stride; a strong, resourceful woman who made do with what she had, and was happy with it.

Susan Stewart Grubb