Nothing Daunted

by Wickenden, Dorothy

  Mary Pat Dunn, the former curator of the Hayden Heritage Center, was a warm, dedicated guide to the center’s collection. She and Rebecca, who is president of the board of directors, organized my other Elkhead excursion that year: on skis and snowmobiles. Sam Barnes, the public-works director of Hayden, provided the snowmobiles and the key to the schoolhouse. The owner of the school, Mary Borg, came along. She teaches at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and became a resource on the school’s history and on the Meeker rebellion. Her family secured a historic designation for the building in January 2008. Penny and Cal Howe, who live on the property once owned by the Harrison family, have given me lunch, tours of their ranch, descriptions of old threshing equipment and the seasons and wildlife of Elkhead, stories about Lewis’s and Frank Jr.’s visits to the place where they grew up, and an understanding of how deeply the early settlers were attached to their land.

  Ros’s son Kennard Perry—who lives in the Tudor house that Ros and Bob built on the outskirts of Denver—and Ken’s daughter, Barbara, talked to me about Ros, Sam, and Bob, the Moffat Coal Company, and the exploits of Marjorie Perry. I found Lewis Harrison’s daughter, Jane Harrison Telder, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and her son, Richard, in Atlanta, Georgia; they rounded out the life story of Lewis, the undersize fourteen-year-old boy who guided the teachers to and from school each day.

  Two of Rosamond’s grandsons, Peter Cosel and his brother Rob, met me in Norwalk, Connecticut, in the fall of 2009 and let me root through their family’s boxes of papers until I found Ros’s letters from Elkhead, her mother’s diaries, and the legal envelope full of newspaper clips about Bob’s kidnapping.

  Timothy Jones, the grandson of another pioneering Colorado schoolteacher, Leah Mae Mahaney, sent me her unpublished autobiography about her experience teaching in Kremmling, Colorado, in 1916, at the age of nineteen.

  Professional and amateur historians, from Auburn to Oak Creek, assisted me with resourcefulness and verve:

  AUBURN AND OWASCO LAKE

  For over a year, Sheila Tucker, the Cayuga County historian, worked with me to track down Auburn characters, events, photographs, and genealogies, and she read Chapter Two for accuracy. Peter Wisbey, the former executive director of the Seward House Museum, and Jennifer Haines, the education director, conveyed little-known facts about the Sewards and early Auburn history; Barbara Woodruff and Erik and Sheila Osborne were generous hosts at their cottages on the lake. Barbara and Jean Marshall (Ros’s niece by marriage) took a group of us to dinner at the Owasco Country Club. Erik loaned me family papers and gave me glimpses into his remarkable ancestry. David Connelly, who is writing a book about the prison reformer Thomas Mott Osborne, Erik’s grandfather, tipped me off to Osborne’s friendship with FDR. He, too, read the Auburn chapter. Devens Osborne and Betsey Osborne, Leland Underwood Kruger Coalson, Richard L. Coalson, and Chuck Underwood Kruger helped me sort out five generations of their families, and supplied scrapbooks and personal histories.

  Eileen McHugh, executive director of the Cayuga Museum of History and Art, pointed me to sources on the Woodruffs and Beardsleys and the Auburn state prison. Joanne O’Connor, an insatiable Auburn history buff, and her brother, Peter, own the summer house on Owasco Lake that once belonged to Rosamond’s parents. Peter showed me around one summer afternoon; Joanne sent a steady supply of newspaper clips and books. Joe O’Hearn, who publishes “O’Hearn’s Histories” of Auburn, a monthly online newsletter, unearthed obscure information about various secondary characters. My friend Mike Connor, who grew up in Auburn, read the chapter and cheered me on in the project.

  PARIS, CANNES, AND BARCELONA

  Friends at the New Yorker helped in various ways: Peter Schjeldahl, with the Fauve movement and the relationships among Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and Matisse; Paul Goldberger, with the architecture of Les Lotus in Cannes; and Jon Lee Anderson, with old Barcelona.

  Marianne Billaud, Marie Hélène Cainaud, and Marie Brunel, of Ville de Cannes, Archives Municipales, sent photographs and histories of Villa Les Lotus; Christopher Glazek helped with French translation and Nicholas Backlund with Paris and Cannes research; Janet Skeslien Charles looked into the location of Mme Rey’s school; Jean Strouse put me in touch with David Smith, who contacted Sandra Ribas in Barcelona, who uncovered the identity of the mysterious art collector Mr. Stuart, whose name was mentioned (and misspelled) by my grandmother in one of her letters.

  DENVER, THE MOFFAT ROAD, AND STEAMBOAT SPRINGS

  Debra Faulkner, the historian of the Brown Palace Hotel, told me about the hotel’s early days and showed me the guest ledger signed by Ros on July 26, 1916. Moya Hanson, a curator at the Colorado Historical Society, was an excellent guide to Denver’s past.

  Dave Naples, president of the Moffat Railroad Museum project and the Grand County Model Railroad Club, was an amiable companion on this part of my journey. He read and made adjustments to the “Hell Hill” chapter, and supplied me with details about the size of the locomotives and the setup of the parlor cars. He showed me the site of his future museum in Granby and took me around Fraser, where Dr. Susan Anderson practiced at the turn of the twentieth century; her examination table and the contents of her doctor’s bag are in a room upstairs at the Cozens Ranch & Stage Stop Museum.

  One of my happiest early discoveries was Ros’s oral history at Tread of Pioneers Museum. When I put the CD in the computer and heard her inflections and turns of phrase as an elderly woman describing her year in Elkhead, I felt as if I were listening again to my grandmother. I have since spent many hours in the museum, assisted by curator Katie Peck Adams and executive director Candice Lombardo. Daniel Tyler and Betty Henshaw were solicitous hosts, as were Renny Daly and Jain Himot—proving my grandmother’s point about the hospitality of Westerners. Holly Williams, who has maintained a decades-long relationship with the Perry-Mansfield Camp, led me further into its remarkable history. The former executive director, June Lindenmayer, provided contacts and context. Karolynn Lestrud, the camp historian, sent early photographs. T. Ray Faulkner, a retired professor of dance who worked as the assistant to Portia and Charlotte from 1957–65 and as a volunteer from 1969–2008, was a delightful source of personal recollections about them and the early days of modern dance.

  OAK CREEK, HAYDEN, AND ELKHEAD

  Mike Yurich, a full-time volunteer at Tracks and Trails Museum (part of the Historical Society of Oak Creek and Phippsburg), assisted by Laurie Elendu, was one of my guides to the town. Mike, inspired by a homesteader who spoke to his fifth-grade class, has spent some sixty-five years collecting photos, old-timers’ stories, newspaper articles, and miners’ equipment. Ferry Carpenter was the commencement speaker his senior year, and, Mike told me, “that clinched the interest.” He spent several afternoons talking to me about Oak Creek’s colorful past. Paul Bonnifield, a former coal miner and conductor on the Denver and Rio Grande, taught me about the geology and the coal-mining history of Routt County as we toured Oak Hills and Phippsburg, where he grew up in a shack built by the Moffat Road. In a series of evocative e-mails, he also enabled me to see and feel what it was like to be inside a mine and in Oak Hills when the coal companies were in operation.

  No one was more scrupulous about her area of expertise than the late Jan Leslie, who served for many years as Hayden’s unofficial historian. Much of what I learned about Hayden came from her, in e-mails and packages of clippings and photos. Betsy Blakeslee, the manager of the Carpenter Ranch, gave me the run of Ferry’s library—an excellent way to gauge the breadth of his mind and interests. There are shelves of volumes on Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln, around the corner from a section on cattle breeding and one on poetry. As Betsy and I skied around what is now the property of the Nature Conservancy, she explained the conservation and educational work the group does, along with the ranching. Laurel Watson, the curator at the Hayden Heritage Center, helped with final questions about the town; Tammy Delaney and Heather Stirling discussed what they knew about Isadore Bolt
en; Bain and Christine White gave me a tour of the former Hayden Inn, now their house, which they are meticulously restoring; Bette Rathe, at the University of Northern Colorado, gave guidance about Colorado students’ final exams.

  LIBRARIES

  I would like to thank Nanci A. Young, the college archivist at Smith College Archives, and Amy Hague, the curator of manuscripts at the Sophia Smith Collection, for their patience with numerous requests. At Princeton University Library: Christine A. Lutz, assistant university archivist for public services, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. At the Denver Public Library, Western History/Genealogy Department: Ellen Zazzarino, senior archivist/librarian, and Bruce Hanson, researcher. At the Huntington Library: Peter Blodgett, H. Russell Smith Foundation curator of Western historical manuscripts, and Katrina Denman, library assistant for Western history.

  —————————

  A number of people were key to the creation of this book, which began as an article in the New Yorker. It was David Remnick, with whom I have worked for sixteen years, who prodded me to start writing again for the magazine. His lucid prose and ferocious work ethic are a perpetual source of inspiration. Emily Eakin was my editor on the piece; her astute suggestions continued to influence me throughout the project. Others with multitudinous skills who saw the article through: Henry Finder, Daniel Zalewski, Mary Hawthorne, Ann Goldstein, Lila Byock (who masterfully fact-checked both the piece and the book), Virginia Cannon, Hendrik Hertzberg, Pamela McCarthy, Elisabeth Biondi, Caroline Mailhot, Jessie Wender, and Mengfan Wu. Outside the magazine, the first person I heard from was my incomparable agent, Amanda Urban, who e-mailed at six-thirty on Easter morning, after reading the article, urging me to write a book. Ron Bernstein soon followed with his own notes of encouragement.

  I am indebted to friends and family who read and improved the book. Connie Bruck saw the possibilities in the final story before I even started writing, read it more than once, and goaded me at every step. Katherine Boo did a superb edit from Mumbai even as she was finishing her own book. David Rompf, Roger Rosenblatt, Daniel Tyler, Betty Henshaw, Hermione Wickenden, Cynthia Snyder, and Lauren Collins were my first generous readers. Nicholas Trautwein and David Grann read parts of the book and were trusted consultants; David Greenberg, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, kindly read all of it for accuracy.

  Thomas Mallon helped me to look at letters in a new way. Alexa Cassanos, Ann Hulbert, Claudia Roth Pierpont, Anne Garrels, Constance Casey, Lawrence Wright, Kip Hawley, David and Peter Wickenden, and Norma Weiser had sound suggestions. Andrea Thompson, Chloe Fox, Betsy Morais, and Natalie Shutler helped me track down stray facts, and Chloe proofread the galleys. Maria Alkiewicz Penberthy told me about her great-grandmother Jane Kelly, the 1888 Smith graduate who went on to become a doctor; Maria handed over her own archival materials from the Sophia Smith Collection.

  At Scribner, I would like to thank the entire team that produced this book. My inspirational editor, Nan Graham, read it several times and had unerring guidance on everything from where to begin to the shape of the epilogue. Susan Moldow has been the shrewd, attentive publisher every writer longs for. Others who lent their vision and skills include Rex Bonomelli, Carla Jones, Beth Thomas, Kate Lloyd, Brian Belfiglio, Roz Lippel, Kara Watson, Paul Whitlatch, and Dan Cuddy.

  Nothing Daunted is, in part, about the strength of family ties. In my case, these include not only the industrialists and matriarchs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but also my father, Dan Wickenden, the writer and editor who inspired my career. My daughters, Sarah and Rebecca, have the radiant spirit and good humor of their great-grandmother, and her blunt honesty. They indulged my perpetually preoccupied state and pulled me away from the computer when I had been there too long. Becca sat down one day and assembled a draft of the bibliography. Over the years, my husband, Ben, has taught me a lot about reporting, and he helped with some of the investigative challenges posed by this project. He offered steady counsel from start to finish. For his integrity and devotion, I am indebted to him every day.

  MORE PHOTOS FROM DOROTHY WOODRUFF’S ALBUMS

  Minnie Jones and Marie Huguenin

  The teachers’ room at the Harrison ranch

  Charlie and Paroda Fulton with their children

  Rosamond’s class

  Dorothy burning her trash by the henhouse

  Isadore Bolten’s cobbling class

  On sunny days at recess, the boys liked to ski down the hill by the school

  A SCRIBNER READING GROUP GUIDE NOTHING DAUNTED BY DOROTHY WICKENDEN

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. In the prologue, Wickenden calls Ros and Dorothy’s adventure “an alternative Western.” What do you think she means by this? After finishing the book, do you agree? How does their story compare to your idea of the classic Western?

  2. Dorothy and Ros, Wickenden writes, were “bothered by the idea of settling into a staid life of marriage and motherhood without having contributed anything to people who could benefit from the few talents and experiences they had to offer”. How does this statement influence your perspective of Ros and Dorothy? What did they eventually pass along to the students of Elkhead? What did they learn from their students and their families?

  3. How are Ros and Dorothy different from each other? How are they similar?

  4. Each section and chapter opens with a photograph—from Dorothy as a twelve-year-old in Auburn to Bob Perry outside his cabin in Oak Hills. How did these pictures shape or enhance your reading of Nothing Daunted? How did they add to your understanding of the setting and time period?

  5. Similarly, how did the inclusion of letters and notes enhance your reading? Was there one particular or memorable correspondence that stood out to you?

  6. William H. Seward was known as a firebrand for representing the black defendant in a notorious murder case and for befriending abolitionist Harriet Tubman. What influence did Seward, Tubman, and other strong personalities in Auburn have on Dorothy and Ros?

  7. How would you define Ros and Dorothy’s teaching experience in one word? How did people react to their arrival in Elkhead? How did the girls’ families react to their decision to leave the comforts of their homes in Auburn?

  8. How would you describe Ferry Carpenter? Wickenden writes that he “believed that American democracy was born on the frontier”. What effect did the lawlessness and opportunities of the West have on Ferry’s imagination and aspirations? How did the frontier influence Ros and Dorothy?

  9. Discuss the title of the book. Do you think it refers to the heroines’ courage? What kind of education did Dorothy and Ros themselves receive in the West?

  10. After Ros and Dorothy applied to be teachers, Ferry was told that one of the applicants “was voted the best-looking girl in the junior class of Smith College!”. What advantages—educational, social, physical—did Ros and Dorothy have over other applicants? What were their potential disadvantages?

  11. Ros and Dorothy received nearly identical scores on their Colorado teachers’ exams. Ros wrote to her mother: “I think Mrs. Peck must have been perjuring her soul, to give [those scores] to us”. What did she mean?

  12. How did the structure of the narrative, with its flashbacks to the past and flash-forwards to the current day, influence how you read Nothing Daunted?

  13. Do you think anyone else could have written this story about Ros and Dorothy’s time in Colorado? How would the story have been different if it was not written from the perspective of a family member?

  ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

  1. Wickenden writes that Dorothy “recorded an oral history, speaking with unerring precision about her childhood and about her time in Colorado. Retrieving the transcript of the tape, I was reminded of the breathtaking brevity of America’s past” (page xi). Try recording a brief oral history of your own, perhaps about an important trip you took, a big event in your family, or some other significant milestone. Did you remember details from the story that
you had forgotten by saying it aloud?

  2. Find some old letters, postcards, diaries, or other artifacts of your family’s past. After reading and taking notes on their contents, write a short narrative of an event from within—a trip, a wedding, or some other event. Be sure to include whatever details you can to give it real shape.

  3. Prepare some recipes that have been passed down in your family. Perhaps, like the miners of Oak Creek, members of your family were immigrants, bringing recipes with them. Alternatively, look through a relative’s cookbook for something you’ve had with them before. Bring the dish to your book club meeting and share the history of the dish.

  A CONVERSATION BETWEEN DOROTHY WICKENDEN AND NEW YORKER EDITOR DAVID REMNICK AT MCNALLY JACKSON BOOKS, NEW YORK CITY, JUNE 23, 2011

  David Remnick: Dorothy and I started at the New Yorker at about the same time—I as a writer and Dorothy as executive editor. There is no one at the New Yorker who has helped transform the magazine more. Her gift for language, her gift for people, and her extraordinary sense of judgment and fairness have benefited everybody and everything that she’s touched. So I’m doubly delighted that she decided to write this book.

  Dorothy, what were you thinking? Most writers are writers, and most editors are editors. You opened a drawer, both spiritually and physically, and something happened. What made you decide to write when you opened this drawer and found the letters of your grandmother?