Caroline Kirkland: 'A new home, who'll follow?'

    "I have never seen a cougar--nor been bitten by a rattlesnake. The reader who has patience to go with me to the close of my desultory sketches, must expect nothing beyond a meandering recital of common-place occurrences--mere gossip about every-day people, little enhanced in value by any fancy or ingenuity of the writer; in short, a very ordinary pen-drawing; which, deriving no interest from colouring, can be valuable only for its truth."
    So wrote Caroline Kirkland, one of many well-educated Eastern women who followed their husbands west into America's new frontier. Born in 1801, Kirkland grew up in a literary home and became a teacher, providing a valuable income for her family when her father died in 1822.
    With her husband, William, she had seven children and moved to Detroit in 1835. William founded and named the pioneer town of Pinkney, and Caroline recorded those experiences in her first book, A New Home - Who will Follow?.
    While her candid memoir met with critical success, it did not amuse her neighbors, who were featured in Kirkland's prose. The resulting outcry led the Kirklands to move back to New York, where Caroline continued a successful literary career and worked as an advocate for women's rights and opposing slavery. She died of a stroke in 1864.

Learn more:
Scribbling Women
Bedford/St. Martin's Press