The important things of life
Subtitle: women, work, and family in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1880-1929
By: Dee Garceau.
Series: Women in the West
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Lincoln
Language: eng
Number of pages: 215
Subjects: Women pioneers -- Wyoming -- Sweetwater County -- Social conditions; Women pioneers -- Wyoming -- Sweetwater County -- Social life and customs; Frontier and pioneer life -- Wyoming -- Sweetwater County; Sex role -- Wyoming -- Sweetwater County -- History; Family -- Wyoming -- Sweetwater County -- History; Sweetwater County (Wyo.) -- Social conditions; Sweetwater County (Wyo.) -- Social life and customs
Description: The Important Things of Life examines women's work and family lives in Sweetwater County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The discovery of coal in the 1880s caused a population boom, attracting immigrants from numerous ethnic groups. At the same time, liberalized homestead law drew sheep and cattle ranchers.

Dee Garceau illuminates the economic and social importance of women in the ethnically diverse working-class towns as well as in the decentralized agricultural and ranching communities populated by native-born, middle-class Anglo-American families.

Augmented by reminiscences and oral histories, this book traces the adaptations that broadened women's work roles and increased their domestic authority. Garceau also demonstrates how survival on the ranching and mining frontier heightened the value of group cooperation. Hers is a compelling portrait of the American West as a laboratory of gender role change, in which migration, relocation, and new settlement underscored the development of new social identities.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-208) and index.