Smith, Ursula 1934–

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Smith, Ursula 1934–

PERSONAL: Born January 3, 1934, in Santa Maria, CA; daughter of Jules (a physician) and Mary Loretta (a nurse; maiden name, Connolly) Bertero; married James Francis Smith (an insurance agent), July 19, 1958 (divorced, 1988); children: James, Jr., Joseph, Christopher, Ursula, Nora. Education: Lone Mountain College (now University of San Francisco), B.A., 1955; San Francisco State University, graduate studies, 1955–56.

ADDRESSES: Home—Middletown Springs, VT. Office—Linda Peavy/Ursula Smith, P.S., A Partnership, 169 Garron Rd., Middletown Springs, VT 05757. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Mission High School, San Francisco, CA, teacher of English, 1956–58; secretary and office manager for computer and real estate firms, Bozeman, MT, 1977–80; writer, 1980–. Gives readings, workshops, and presentations in women's history and biography; formerly coeditor of Coalition for Western Women's History Newsletter; historical consultant for Frontier House, a Public Broadcasting Service documentary.

MEMBER: Editorial Freelancers Association, Western History Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Paladin Award for best articles in Montana, the Magazine of Western History, with Linda Peavy, 1985, 2002; Notable Children's Trade Book in the field of social studies, National Council for Social Studies and the Children's Book Council, 1986, and Children's Book of the Year, Child Study Association of America, 1987, both for Dreams into Deeds; residency in nonfiction at Centrum, Port Townsend, WA, with Linda Peavy, 1988; National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, with Linda Peavy, 2003; recipient, with Linda Peavy, of Redd Center for Western Studies Independent Research Award and a Smithsonian Short-Term Visitors grant.

WRITINGS:

WITH LINDA PEAVY

Food, Nutrition & You, Scribner (New York, NY), 1982.

Women Who Changed Things, Scribner (New York, NY), 1983.

Dreams into Deeds: Nine Women Who Dared, Scribner (New York, NY),1985.

Pamelia (three-act opera; music by Eric Funk), choralversion produced at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY, 1989.

The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls: A Story Drawn from the Letters of Pamelia and James Fergus, Minnesota Historical Society Press (St. Paul, MN), 1990

Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement: Life on the Home Frontier, foreword by John Mack Faragher, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1994.

Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1998.

Frontier Children, foreword by Elliott West, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1999.

(With Linda Peavy and Simon Shaw) Frontier House, photography by Audrey Hall, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to books, including Native Athletes in Sport and Society, edited by C. Richard King, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2005; and Portraits of Women in the American West, edited by Dee Garceau-Hagen, Routledge (New York, NY), 2005. Also contributor to periodicals, with Linda Peavy, including Nebraska Education News, Plainswoman, Cobblestone, Montana English Journal, Woman's Journal Advocate, and Montana, the Magazine of Western History; contributor to the development of screenplays, dramatic scripts, and musical theater productions.

SIDELIGHTS: Ursula Smith, along with her partner Linda Peavy, has written a number of books focusing on the role of women in the history of the American West. Smith told CA: "Some truths are slow in coming. Swept as I was by the drama of the stories I read and heard in the history classes I took as a child and as a college student, it never occurred to me to question the accuracy of those texts. I was well over forty before I came to realize that half the story was missing. None of those books I had so enjoyed had given me the role models I needed in order to reach my fullest potential, for none of those books had told me about the women who shaped our past. I had grown up with the subtle message that everything worth writing about had been accomplished by men; women had done nothing worth remembering. I cannot overemphasize the impact that unstated message has had on countless young women.

"Convinced that future generations must not grow up with the same misconceptions, I have spent the last ten years of my life researching and writing the stories of women whose achievements were remarkable, yet unrecorded and largely unremembered. Writing these stories into history validates the lives of those women and somehow validates my own."

Among Smith and Peavy's most critically praised works are The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls: A Story Drawn from the Letters of Pamelia and James Fergus, Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement: Life on the Home Frontier, and Frontier Children. The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls concentrates on the town of Little Falls, Minnesota, and the many local women who were left behind while their husbands left for the gold fields of Colorado and Montana, hoping to strike it rich. Relying on the correspondence between a married couple in particular, and on other letters from women in that town, Smith and Peavy create a picture of the hard lives that women and their families suffered when husbands and fathers left home in search of a better life. Penny Kaganoff, writing in Publishers Weekly, called The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls a "well-researched, highly readable study" and "a valuable addition to the history of the American West."

Smith and Peavy expand their focus in Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement to tell the stories of women throughout America who were left behind while their husbands headed west in search of gold or better farmland. Often left by their husbands for months or even years, the women raised their families, managed farms, survived fires and floods, and chronicled their daily lives in letters and diaries. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that "the loneliness and fears of these all-but-abandoned women speak eloquently over the years." Renee H. Shea, writing in Belles Lettres, commented that "ultimately, what is most compelling about these women is not their hardships and loss but their grit, will, and, by various definitions, their triumphs."

Frontier Children contains some 200 photographs of children of the old West, both at work and at play, along with contemporary, firsthand accounts of their daily lives. The result is an honest, personal record of an aspect of western expansion often overlooked. Fred Egloff noted in Booklist that "all … facets of the frontier experience are examined in relation to how they affected … children." Library Journal contributor Daniel D. Liestman wrote, "Providing a unique window on a historical aspect of childhood, this book will appeal to a wide segment of readers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Agricultural History, spring, 2001, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, review of Frontier Children, p. 247.

American Historical Review, October, 1995, Peggy Pascoe, review of Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement: Life on the Home Frontier, p. 1304.

American Studies, spring, 1995, Renee M. Sentilles, review of Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, p. 173.

Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, spring, 1995, Renee H. Shea, review of Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, p. 72.

Booklist, March 15, 1994, Denise Perry Donavin, review of Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, p. 1325; April 15, 1996, Donna Seaman, review of Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier, p. 1418; October 1, 1999, Fred Egloff, review of Frontier Children, p. 341.

Choice, October, 1998, P.F. Field, review of Pioneer Women, p. 382.

Journal of American Culture, winter, 1998, Kathleen R. Winter, review of Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, p. 102.

Journal of American History, June, 1995, Darlis A. Miller, review of Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, p. 263.

Kliatt, July, 2003, Lind Piwowarczyk, review of Frontier Children, p. 49.

Library Journal, October 15, 1999, Daniel D. Liestman, review of Frontier Children, p. 84.

Pacific Historical Review, November, 1995, Glenda Riley, review of Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, p. 607; May, 2001, Ruth B. Moynihan, review of Frontier Children, p. 324.

Pacific Northwest Quarterly, summer, 2000, LeRoy Ashby, review of Frontier Children, p. 164.

Publishers Weekly, April 6, 1990, Penny Kaganoff, review of The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls: A Story Drawn from the Letters of Pamelia and James Fergus, p. 112; April 4, 1994, review of Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, p. 68.

Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April, 2001, Tom Harvey, review of Frontier Children, p. 615.

Western Historical Quarterly, autumn, 2000, Peter F. Schmid, review of Frontier Children, p. 361.

Wild West, December, 2000, Chrys Ankeny, review of Frontier Children, p. 70.

Women's Studies, December, 1998, Thomas Hallock, review of Pioneer Women, p. 119.