Women's Words: A History of Arkansas Women in Their Own Words

Maya Angelou
Photograph courtesy of the Arkansas history Commission

You will need the FREE Macromedia Flash Player to view the content above. Download the FREE Macromedia Flash Player.

These faded pages bearing our words from the past and preciously saved through the years are our legacy to you. We penned our diaries and letters and poems and stories with no forethought of endurance. The moment of creation was a present matter, an instant recording of our intimate thoughts and emotions, a revelation of our joys and sorrows, our dreams and hopes.

Girl at a table
Archives & Special Collections, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

In the dim glow of candlelight, hearth fire, or lamp wick, we felt compelled to write: a letter home to relatives and friends, an event in our diary, a poem from our hearts, a story from the freedom of our minds. The patina on these pages is a reflection of that candle glow and a reflection of our souls. Our ink has long dried, but our words remain. Our lives are long over, but our words remain. Our words significant today as they were the day they were written. Perhaps more so.

From within these pages from the past, you will glean a perception not only of the time we lived in, but also of how we related to that season. We accepted frontier life amid its hardships with grace and forbearance. We endured when our fathers, husbands, and sons left for wars.

Two girls & a book
Arkansas History Commission

We persevered and we wrote.

Our diaries and letters tell of the daily events of our lives. We picked blackberries today. We put up five pints of jelly. We washed our clothes in the river and then we fished as they dried on the branches. It rained. There came a flood. Our crops are lost. The mare foaled. The red hen began to set. We planted onions. The first daffodils are blooming. I gathered a few for the table.

Mary Schaap
Arkansas History Commission

I miss my parents — oh, to see them once more. There will be a dance at Mrs. G’s tonight. Will “he” be there? I know now that I am in love. Yesterday I married and moved into our home. Husband has been gone for three weeks now and I worry about him. I felt life stir in my belly today — what joy! Baby is sick. The chills and fever continue. My darling boy died today. Will this war ever end? How can we continue to live like this?

Our words whisper of epochs otherwise gone, forgotten and lost in the past. They tell of joy and laughter, of pain and hardship, of struggle and endurance. Written amidst backdrops of myriad settings, they illuminate our times, our surroundings, and our relationship and our reaction to those conditions.

You can only imagine what life was like during frontier days, slavery, the Civil War, the aftermath, and the Great Depression. Our words will tell you. We were there. The same earth you stand upon, we stood upon. We lie buried in it now, but our words, fragments of our hearts and souls, go on forever.