Writing about four centuries of midwestern women's history, including urban, rural, and frontier women, Native Americans, African Americans, Mexicanas, as well as European migrants, this work discusses ways midwestern women's lives resemble those women of other regions and ways in which their lives are distinctive.

Foreword by Glenda RileyIntroduction: The Strange Career of Madame Dubuque and Midwestern Women's History Wendy Hamand Venet and Lucy Eldersveld MurphyI. Four Lives1. Leadership within the Women's Community: Susie Bonga Wright of the Leech Lake Ojibwe Rebecca Kugel2. Journeywoman Milliner: Emily Austin, Migration, and Women's Work in the Nineteenth Century Midwest Lucy Eldersveld Murphy3. Mary McDowell and Municipal Housekeeping: Women's Political Activism in Chicago, 1890 Karen M. Mason4. The Limits of Community: Martha Friesen of Hamilton County, Kansas Pamela Riney-KehrbergII. Community and Leadership5. "For the good of her people": Continuity and Change for Native Women of the Midwest, 1650-18506. "Those with whom I feel most nearly connected": Kinship and Gender in Early Ohio Tamara G. Miller7. The Ethnic Female Public Sphere: German-American Women in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago Christiane Harzig8. Sisterhood and Community: The Sisters of Charity and African-American Women's Health Care in Indianapolis, 1876-1920 Earline Rae FergusonIII. Work9. "The indescribable care devolving upon a housewife": Women's and Men's Perceptions of Pioneer Foodways on the Midwestern Frontier Sarah F. McMahon10. Changing Times: Iowa Farm Women and Cooperative Home Economics Extension in the1920s and 1950s Dorothy Schwieder11. Women, Unions, and Debates over Work during World War II in Indiana Nancy F. Gabin12. "Making Rate": Mexicana Immigrant Workers in an Illinois Electronics Plant Irene Campos CarrBibliography