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American Grit: A Woman's Letters from the Ohio Frontier. Edited by Emily Foster. ( Lexington , KY : The University Press of Kentucky, 2002. vii, 368pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN: 978-0-8131-2265-6.)
In 1826, Anna Briggs Bentley, her husband Joseph, and their six children left their home in Maryland for the frontier of Columbiana County , Ohio . Anna Bentley was from a wealthy and well-connected Quaker family, her father was closely associated with President Thomas Jefferson, and when President James Madison fled Washington D.C. just ahead of the British army he took refuge with members of the Briggs family. However, with the death of Isaac Briggs, the family patriarch in 1825, the family fell upon difficult times. In the hope of making a better life for themselves and their family Anna and Joseph Bentley joined countess other pioneers in moving west, eventually settling on a farm they named Green Hill in the wilderness of Ohio . From her new home, Anna Bentley wrote long letters to her family back in Maryland. These letters detail farm life on the frontier, her struggles to raise her growing family, the generosity of her neighbors, and her desire not to be forgotten by her Maryland family.
Emily Foster's American Grit is a collection of those letters, written from 1826 to 1858 that. Foster, a director of research and writing services specializing in public affairs communications, allows Bentley's natural storytelling ability to shine. Throughout her letters, Bentley gives the reader an intimate look at the life of a pioneer wife and mother. Determined to keep in contact with her family in the east, Bentley details the everyday details of her life. She shares stories of the generosity of her neighbors, how they helped her to adjust to frontier life through gifts of food, shared labor – such as sending their older daughters to help Bentley with the laundry and other housework, and most importantly giving her a sense of extended family in her new community. She often writes of neighbor women that she considers like sisters, or like the mother she left behind and how instrumental these women were in helping her in spite of the fact that they were of a much lower social status than those whose company she had preciously enjoyed.
Bentley also writes about her growing family that eventually amounted to thirteen children, and the difficulties she faced trying to supply their needs. Throughout her letters home Bentley drops hints as to ways in which her family could help them from sending new needles since she had no place to buy them herself, how she wished she had some of her eastern family's cast off clothing that she could remake for her children who were dressed in “rags,” and how she craved a cup of coffee as they had not had any in a very long time. Her purpose in doing so was twofold. Her family really did have a need for the things that she hinted at because while they were well fed and sheltered there was very little cash money on the frontier. This made it extremely difficult to supply the other needs of her family. But her greatest motivation appeared to be for her eastern family to remember her children and to keep letters and information flowing between the families.Page 1 of 2, Next >>
