Publisher Description

Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered most family responsibilities: keeping house, sewing clothing, cultivating and cooking food, and bearing and raising children. But despite their contributions to the southern agricultural economy, rural women's stories have remained largely untold.

Using oral history interviews and written memoirs, Rebecca Sharpless weaves a moving account of women's lives on Texas cotton farms. She examines how women from varying ethnic backgrounds—German, Czech, African American, Mexican, and Anglo-American—coped with difficult circumstances. The food they cooked, the houses they kept, the ways in which they balanced field work with housework, all yield insights into the twentieth-century South. And though rural women's lives were filled with routines, many of which were undone almost as soon as they were done, each of their actions was laden with importance, says Sharpless, for the welfare of a woman's entire family depended heavily upon her efforts.

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A moving account of women

Author Biography

Rebecca Sharpless is associate professor of history at Texas Christian University. She is author of"Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms".

Table of Contents

-1940 Copyright (c) 1999 The University of North Carolina Press ISBN 0-8078-2456-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-8078-4760-7 (pbk.) -->ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction: Women, Cotton, and the Crop-Lien System 1. Women, Daughters, Wives, Mothers: Gender and Family Relationships 2. Keeping Warm, Keeping Dry: Housekeeping and Clothing in the Blackland Prairie 3. Living at Home: Food Production and Preparation in the Blackland Prairie 4. Making a Hand: Women's Labor in the Fields 5. Life Beyond the Farm: Women and Their Communities 6. Staying or Going: Urbanization and the Depopulation of the Rural Blackland Prairie Notes Bibliography Index MapsMajor physical features of the Blackland Prairie of Texas Counties of the Blackland Prairie of Texas Moves of the Rice family, Hunt County, Texas IllustrationsSpring plowing, Williamson County Mother and children at a cotton wagon, Kaufman County Board and batten tenant farmer's house, Ellis County Landowner's daughter weighing cotton, Kaufman County African American church on the open prairie, Ellis County TablesTable 1. Number of Tenants and Landowners in Four Blacklands Counties, 1900-1940 Table 2. Average Age of Farmers' Wives at First Marriage in Four Blacklands Counties, by Ethnic Group, 1900 and 1910 Table 3. Average Number of Births and Surviving Children Born to Farmers' Wives under Age Forty-Five in Four Blacklands Counties, by Ethnic Group, 1900 and 1910 Table 4. Months of Field Work Women Performed Per Year, by Ethnic Group Table 5. Percentage of Women Performing Farming Tasks, by Ethnic Group, in Hill County, 1921 Table 6. Literacy Rates for Women under Age Forty-Five in Four Blacklands Counties, by Ethnic Group, 1900 and 1910 Table 7. Change in Numbers of Tenants and Farm Owners in Four Blacklands Counties, 1930 and 1940 Table 8. Population Growth of Towns in Four Blacklands Counties, 1900-1940 Table 9. Population Growth of Major Blacklands Cities, 1900-1940

Review

The book covers the life and role of women on the farms in a most delightful way. It is necessary reading for those of us raised on tales of how live was in those years....Rebecca Sharpless did a great service to the history and culture of Central Texas by writing this fine book.--The Mexia News

Long Description

Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered most family responsibilities: keeping house, sewing clothing, cultivating and cooking food, and bearing and raising children. But despite their contributions to the southern agricultural economy, rural women's stories have remained largely untold.Using oral history interviews and written memoirs, Rebecca Sharpless weaves a moving account of women's lives on Texas cotton farms. She examines how women from varying ethnic backgrounds

Review Quote

[W]e hear the women's voices. Seldom heard then or now, they offer a haunting and memorable tale.Journal of Women's History

Promotional "Headline"

"[This book] brings to the fore a group that has not been studied adequately by scholars of rural women or southern history. Sharpless makes excellent use of oral histories to describe the shared poverty and hard labor of these women. . . . A useful and necessary contribution."-- Journal of American History

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