Prostitutes coming to the the Pearl
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| Melinda Strobel |
The live, one-woman performance by Melinda Stroebel, on stage at the Pearl Theater at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 19, will introduce you to some amazing women, from pious nuns to brazen hussies, each of whom left a lasting legacy in shaping the American West.
A composite presentation, Strobel never leaves character, though she plays many. Even in the narration, setting each scene and locale by which to introduce another amazing lady of a bygone era, she evokes the amazing spirit of the age, of the struggles of women in that era and of the various ways they faced danger and helped tame the wild west.
You'll meet Sister Loyola, a Belgian-born nun who traveled to the U.S. in 1844, made an overland journey to what is now St. Paul, Oregon, and set up, with five other nuns, a school for girls, teaching the refined arts of reading, writing, sewing cooking and laundry in a place where any sense of refinement was rare.
"... We do not fear," this brave woman said, "for we realize that Divine Providence is watching over us. We kill snakes and chase wild cattle as you would brush aside a fly."
Then
there's Charley Parkhust, a girl born in 1812
who grew up working in a livery stable and
learned to drive.Hers weren't the sleek sedans we enjoy today, but a rougher sort of transport; two-, four- and even six-horse teams of often recalcitrant animals strapped by leather and controlled by reins to transports ranging from a simple dray to the semi of the day, the overland stage coach. Coming to California in 1850, she made a name for herself driving through rain, mud and rough country.
"Charley was a great whip," A.N. Judd said. "When HE pulled into the old Nebraska House with a beautifully-equipped 20-passenger Concord coach drawn by six mustangs, it was an inspiring scene indeed."
There's no record what Mr. Judd may have said had he known Charley was of the gentler gender.
Then
there's Margaret Hall, as born in Dublin in
1853, who landed on the U.S. shore in New York
with her family 20 years later.Unable to find work, she turned to prostitution and made her way west, landing in Murray, Idaho, at the start of the 1884 gold rush, now known as "Molly."
She could cuss with the best of them, then turn around and deliver a quote from Shakespeare or the Bible.
On her way over Thompson Pass on her way to Idaho, in winter, she is purported to have saved a stranded woman and child; when a smallpox epidemic hit the camps in 1886, Molly B'Dam, as she was by then known, organized the effort to care for the sick, and though she died of tuberculosis January 17, 1888, age only 34 or 35 (a question still in dispute), she's still remembered every year during Murray's Molly B'Damn Days.
Bethenia
Owens married one of her father's farmhands at
14, had a baby boy, George, at 16 and divorced
her abusive husband at age 19, an event frowned
upon in an era when women had little stature and
few rights.Instead of succumbing to the stigma, Bethenia Owens, who later married again, though saddled a growing child, went to school. After her achievements in grammar school gave her passage to normal school, the college of the day, she parleyed her academic success to graduate school ... the only one progressive enough to admit a woman, let alone one "fallen," and she earned the right to attend the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1874.
She earned a second medical degree in 1880 from the University of Michigan to become the first female doctor to treat patients in Washington and Oregon.
George became a doctor, too, and left a legacy of his own, thanks to his Mom, Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair.
Call them what you will, brand them with a stigma gained fair or ill, the women Strobel portrays in "Western Women: Pioneers and Prostitutes" are amazing, and an indelible part of who we are today.
Sponsored by the Boundary County Library and presented by the Idaho Humanities Council, Stroble's performance is free and open to the public. The doors and the Pearl Cafe, 4160 Ash Street, Bonners Ferry, open at 6 p.m.