Women of the Frontier

by Brandon Marie Miller

  What Mary Ann quickly noticed was San Franciscans’ love of theater, and children proved a great draw. Kate and Ellen Bateman, only 11 and 9 years old, played Shakespeare. Sue Robinson, a prominent “fairy star,” or child actor, could sing, dance, and recite. Mary Ann met the Chapman family, a clan of actors. Caroline Chapman, singer and dancer, was the rage of San Francisco.

  Audiences believed in a long night of entertainment punctuated with variety—Shakespeare, comedies, singing and dancing, minstrel shows, and hand-painted travelogues that slowly unrolled panoramas to narration. The town boasted a number of theaters, some impressive indeed, seating several thousand guests, with lush drapery, gilt domes and columns, and thick carpets. The clientele might still be a little rough, however, and brawling often took place in the aisles even as the show went on. Mary Ann found the possibilities for riches exciting, even if she disapproved of the theater’s light morals and scandals.

  Once Mary Ann and Lotta hooked up again with John Crabtree in Grass Valley and later Rabbit Creek, Mary Ann enrolled Lotta in dancing and singing lessons. The Crabtrees met Lola Montez, an entertainer with a shady past that included numerous marriages. Montez took an interest in Lotta and encouraged the family’s hopes for their daughter’s stage career.

  After Lotta’s debut, she headed off into the mountains with Taylor, her mother, and her baby brother John. Often traveling without road or path, skirting cliffs and boulders, Lotta made the journey strapped to a horse for safety. The group stopped at every two-bit mining town, where Taylor would rent a room. It was sometimes little more than a tent, with sawhorses and boards making a stage and blankets hung in place of a stage curtain. Taylor told jokes and sang and danced, but Lotta stole the show. The evening’s take depended upon the miners’ luck, and the tour—marred by uneven pay, fear of robbers, and even Indians—continued through dozens of mining camps and scrubby towns.

  It wasn’t long before Lotta turned into the Crabtree family breadwinner. With Mary Ann pregnant again, Lotta’s father even handed his daughter over to another troupe of performers to keep the money flowing. Mary Ann had to send a sheriff to retrieve her daughter from the actors and escort the girl to friends who’d watch Lotta until after the birth of her new brother, George. By 1856, the family pulled together again and headed back to San Francisco.

  The theater scene in San Francisco now drew even European musicians and famous Shakespearean actors from the East, like Edwin Booth. Mary Ann left the two little boys with her sister, and with Mart Taylor accompanied Lotta on several more tours of area mining camps. Miners went wild for Lotta; adopting her as a “pet,” they carried her around on their shoulders and sang her out of town when she left.

  Lotta expanded her roles by joining a popular minstrel show, playing the character of Topsy from Uncle Tom’s Cabin in blackface. She perfected her dances and mastered a large collection of songs, comedy bits, and sketches. But in San Francisco, Lotta was only one performer among many, and the town’s leading manager and owner of the Opera House Theater, Tom Maguire, failed to book her for his shows.

  Instead, Lotta played at the Gaieties, a small theater, in front of a grimy crew of miners, gamblers, and rowdy boys. Most of the entertainment was risqué by 1850s standards. Lotta’s sentimental innocence at the end of the show encouraged the audience to reach deep in their pockets and shower the stage with money. But they were tough crowds. In one incident, when a fight drowned out Lotta’s young voice, Mary Ann whisked her off the stage to safety.

  In performances like this, “La Petite Lotta” paid her dues. For the next few years, Lotta dutifully toured the mining camps and performed all around San Francisco—at amusement parks and markets, at auction houses and low-rent theaters like melodeons where no decent woman would go. But Mary Ann kept order, at least around Lotta. The girl began performing plays, too, not just variety show performances. They were hard years, and while Mary Ann managed the money, it was Lotta’s work and long hours that supported the family.

  Lotta gained only a smattering of formal education during her childhood—nothing interfered with her moneymaking potential. Her longest stretch of continuous education was only six months. But she studied hard to hone her performing crafts, continuing singing and dancing lessons and learning to play the banjo and mandolin. Lotta possessed that spark of performing that couldn’t be taught, however; her natural, often impish, humor and energetic manner lit up the stage and made audiences fall in love.

  Though well-known, Lotta failed to get bookings in the grand theaters of San Francisco. Then in March 1862, Lotta got her big break. Theaters had an intimate relationship with local volunteer fire departments. The buildings, filled with wood, plaster, and gaslights, frequently went up in flames, and fighting these fires required quick responses. It became customary for theaters to put on benefit shows to raise money for firemen. Every performer was expected to do his or her part on these elaborate evenings of fundraising.

  Lotta’s performance at the Metropolitan Temple of Drama to benefit the Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5 drew raves. Invitations poured in for other benefit performances. She danced lively jigs and hornpipes, performed cheeky comedy sketches, and crooned popular songs like, “The Captain with His Whiskers Gave a Sly Wink at Me,” a blend of flirting and innocence. “Rally Round the Flag, Boys,” where Lotta strutted around the stage in a soldier’s uniform, and her sentimental singing of “Dear Mother, I’ll Come Home Again” brought down the house. Lotta was the girl to go anywhere and perform her heart out.

  Now 16 and a seasoned performer, Lotta caught the attention of actress Adah Menken, already married three times and the toast of California. Menken convinced the family they needed to gamble a bit with Lotta’s career. It was time to leave the familiarity of California, and especially San Francisco, and test whether Lotta’s charm could translate to the rest of the country. In April 1864, the Crabtrees left for New York after a tearful farewell performance at Maguire’s Opera House, where Lotta raked in a $1,500 paycheck for the single night.

  But Lotta’s rising star crashed in New York. She played to nearly empty theaters, and one critic claimed, “Her style is certainly not intended for a first-class audience, concert halls being her proper stamping ground.”39 The girl from the Golden West was too “brassy” and low class for New York.

  The failure hurt Lotta, but one man recognized her appeal. B. F. Whitman booked her into a war play, The Seven Sisters, and sent the Crabtrees on tour to Chicago. Here, audiences again loved Lotta, who played five roles, danced, strutted, and played the banjo. She continued a grueling schedule of shows through nearly every town in the Midwest. She played with different actors at most stops and against whatever backdrop a theater possessed. Once again, Lotta Crabtree filled the seats with spectators, and the money rolled in. Mary Ann collected it all and carried it around in a giant satchel. She also began investing her daughter’s money in real estate.

  Back east, Lotta conquered Boston, performing 19 times in 13 different plays, often taking on as many as six roles in one play. She continued extensive touring in the Midwest and South. She mostly played young girls or boys who were separated from their parents and lived by their wits, triumphing before the final curtain came down. The characters lived in mining camps, in a lighthouse, in a pawn shop, but all turned out well in the end; Lotta’s characters found long-lost parents along with fortune and happiness. At five foot two and with glossy red hair, she could easily play a child’s role.

  After several exhausting years, Lotta agreed to attempt New York again. People had not seen her, but they had heard of her by now. Advertisements praised Lotta as the “western wonder,” the “sparkling ingot,” and a “sunbeam.” This time, she charmed audiences and critics in plays like Pet of the Petticoats and Little Nell and the Marchioness, which was written especially for Lotta. One critic noted, “for the proprieties … and august traditions of the stage, [Lotta] shows a reckless contempt…. She says ‘Damn it!’ with spirit and gusto. The audi
ence … likes to hear a woman swear on the stage.”40

  In Firefly, Lotta played a scene as a regimental drummer calling troops to arms. With long flourishes and rolls, she built to a crescendo of drumming as the threat of attack neared. She played for nearly two minutes, the pit orchestra silent, while Lotta’s drumming filled the theater, calling forth a host of marching men. Civil War veterans rose in the aisles, women cried, and people cheered. Lotta’s share of 28 days of shows was nearly $10,000!

  As Lotta’s fame and wealth grew, her father and brother John often proved an embarrassment—drinking, womanizing, and losing her hard-earned money in shady investments. Mary Ann mostly kept a lid on finances, doling out meager allowances to her family, including Lotta. She also made sure no young men came courting her daughter. Over the years, men pursued Lotta for her money. A few admirers bordered on stalking, forcing Lotta to lament to a reporter, “I do wish that a man of a little sense would admire me for once.”41 She also enjoyed several romantic suitors, including a Russian grand duke, but Lotta Crabtree never married.

  In July 1869, Lotta returned to the welcoming arms of San Francisco, a great star coming home. This time the family journeyed with ease on the newly completed transcontinental railroad. Lotta appeared in eight plays before the elite of San Francisco and the miners who traveled from the camps to see their former darling. She performed a farewell benefit in September, and the audience showered the stage with gold coins and even a diamond tiara.

  A new play was written for her—Heart’s Ease—a story of a child taken to California and then abandoned by her English father. Adventures follow, involving revolvers, buried gold, melodrama, dancing, and banjo playing, before Lotta’s character reconciles with her father, returns to England, and marries a proper gentleman. The play was a mainstay for Lotta throughout the 1870s when she formed her own acting company and continued touring the nation.

  The New York Times boasted Lotta had “the face of a beautiful doll and the ways of a playful kitten.” Critics used words like “devilish,” “mischievous,” and “teasing” to describe her. Ardent male admirers unhitched the horses from Lotta’s carriage and pulled her through the streets to the theater. She smoked thin black cigars and closed many shows by pulling back the curtain to reveal her slim ankle, a shock and delight to audiences.

  Lotta often played street urchins onstage, and she started devoting large sums of money to clothe and feed children in need, raggedy newsboys, hotel bellhops, and homeless children who flocked to the theater to see their champion. By the time she was 20, Lotta grew more involved in using her money for good, a role she would continue for the rest of her life, telling a reporter in 1874, “Charity is what is needed in this world.”42 In 1875 she presented San Francisco with a fountain—a practical gift that supplied water to thirsty horses and people, with four basins and black tin cups chained to the stonework for drinking. The fountain rose 21 feet into the air, capped with medallions marking California life.

  Lotta traveled several times to Europe where she studied French, Italian, and painting, which became a lifelong passion. On one voyage, the ship captain pestered her into performing. Lotta agreed, but only if the evening turned into a benefit for sailors’ orphans. Passengers paid up and jammed the ship’s saloon, and Lotta performed.

  Her first attempt to conquer the British stage in 1883—like her first attempt to conquer New York—fell glaringly flat. The audience hissed, sneered, and hooted, offended by a play in which Lotta portrayed a gypsy pursued by a lecherous English nobleman and poked fun at a Salvation Army hymn. But in the end, Lotta won over British audiences playing Little Nell, loosely based on Charles Dickens’s story The Old Curiosity Shop. At one point, she pulled a chair to the edge of the stage and sang, accompanying herself on a mandolin, and audiences loved it. The Prince of Wales even attended a performance.

  Lotta retired from her stage career at the age of 45 after suffering a fall onstage that fractured a vertebra. Her last season, in 1890 and 1891, earned her $87,000—a huge sum. And after decades of touring, of giving every ounce of herself to her audience, Lotta determined to spend her remaining time traveling, painting, and helping others.

  Audiences had turned a bit from her brand of entertaining—the melodramas and rakish comedies, the rags-to-riches stories—to more realistic plays and sophisticated “drawing room” comedies. Lotta had become a star simply because she was Lotta; as one man described it, “The secret of her charm was as hidden as the scent of the rose; it was there—somewhere.”43

  Lotta retired the richest actress in the country and generously donated to charities helping children, animals, and down-on-their luck actors. Lotta paid her last visit to San Francisco in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. On Lotta Crabtree Day, she stood in front of the largest crowd she ever played before, as thousands flocked to greet her. Lotta spoke a few words and then broke down in gratitude and emotion. The crowd chanted her name before they too dissolved into tears.

  When Lotta Crabtree died in 1924, she left an estate valued at $4 million to charity. People claiming to be relatives attacked the will. But in the end, Lotta’s money went where she wanted it to, and her fortune still helps people today. Her gift to San Francisco, Lotta’s Fountain, remains a city landmark, her tribute to the gold rush where a little girl became a shooting star.

  5

  GREAT EXPECTATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

  “That every woman of the age of twenty one years, residing in this Territory, may, at any election … cast her vote.”

  —Wyoming Territory Legislation, December 1869

  Like a wildfire driven before the wind, the west grew quickly. Towns with crowded dirt streets and a hodgepodge of hastily nailed-together buildings provided goods and services for miners, cattlemen, and farmers. But danger and violence lurked around every corner. Popular distractions remained rough—bullfights, horse racing, gambling, lynch mob hangings, and plenty of whiskey guzzling. Even a game of billiards in one case involved guns as men propelled the balls with pistol shots and then shot the tops off decanters behind the bar.

  Wichita, Kansas, 1874. Library of Congress

  “In the short space of twenty-four days, we have had murders, fearful accidents, bloody deaths, a mob, whippings, a hanging, an attempt at suicide, and a fatal duel,” reported a female resident of a California mining town.1 Another woman described her grief and shock when the hanging of two men shattered the Sabbath. Women might enjoy the benefits of town life—available goods, theaters, socializing, and job opportunities—but the lawless ways had to change.

  In the 19th century, a woman’s role meant raising her children, comforting those in need, and providing a home for her husband to retreat from his daily cares. Preserving the “moral values” of society also rested on a woman’s shoulders. Fallen women and drink might lead a man to sin, but a good woman saved not only his soul but the soul of her community as well. For the West, the American Missionary Society prescribed:

  We must send no more unmarried men. California needs woman’s influence … a devoted intelligent woman can do more than two ministers. A shipload of female missionaries would be the greatest blessing California ever had.2

  In the American East and South, the lives of middle- and upper-class women grew more restrictive during the 1800s. In the view of one male writer, women naturally shrank from the struggle and competition of life. Like a child, he wrote, a woman “has but one right and that is the right to protection. The right to protection involves the obligation to obey.”3 Throughout much of the 19th century, women held no legal right to vote, own property, or gain custody of their children.

  Frontier women lacked these rights, too, but they might have laughed at the notion that they shrank from life’s struggle. Western women did not sit back demurely and leave the job of settling Western lands to men. There was simply too much to accomplish—often survival itself lay at stake. Women, wrote one from Kansas, “learned at an early age to depend upon themselves t
o do whatever work there was to be done, and to face danger when it must be faced.”4

  While the West produced its share of notorious ladies like barroom brawler Martha Jane Cannary, better known as Calamity Jane, and the outlaws Pearl Hart and Belle Star, most women who lent a hand settling the frontier were ordinary people. Women and men both believed that frontier rawness needed reform. Men, however, could initiate change through their votes and by holding public office. Without political rights, women found other ways to push for change.

  Calamity Jane claimed work as a Pony Express rider and an Indian scout. Library of Congress

  As the art of sheer survival gave way to a more settled life, women found important elements missing from the Western scene. If a woman’s role was to civilize and hold at bay the darker shades of humanity, she’d begin with those things nearest her heart, and schools and churches stood at the top of the list.

  School Is in Session

  Many women believed in the power of schools to civilize the rough frontier. When too few families lived in an area to support a school, mothers taught their children at home or sent them to neighbor women for instruction. Lessons included reading, writing, and math, with a good dose of morality thrown in as well. Some Westerners, especially army families, made sacrifices to send their children back east for their education.

  As soon as enough school-age children lived in a county, parents banded together to form school systems. Women traveled the county collecting signatures of support for the schools and penned letters to county and state superintendents. Tax money didn’t always cover the cost of teachers’ pay and schoolhouses, so mothers pitched in to make up shortfalls with fundraisers like box suppers and local theatrical performances. Parents themselves often built the schoolhouse when an existing building or room couldn’t be found, and families welcomed teachers into their homes as boarders. One South Dakota woman, a teacher before marriage, felt that “just having a school available made life look a lot better to me.”5