Annette Ranald's Blog: Annette's History Reads - Posts Tagged "eveline-alexander"

Primary source material, such as diaries, letters, first-person memoirs and the like, are invaluable tools for historians and historical fiction authors. Many women who accompanied the husbands on military assignments were Eastern, educated, and took to writing to relieve stress and boredom, and to pay tribute to their husbands' service and their sacrifice. I remember studying two of these women in college and thinking that they whined their way through their time in the West. Looking back now, I know they weren't whining, they were reporting their experiences, what they saw and how they felt about it. Life for officers and men in frontier Army posts was thankless. It was even more grueling for their families, for whom little accommodation was provided.

Eveline Throop Martin Alexander (1843-1922), was born to a wealthy New York family. She had several siblings and her family made sure she was well educated and didn't want for anything. She fell in love with a Cavalry officer, Andrew Alexander, in 1864 and after the war, followed her husband on his various military assignments. He would eventually attain the rank of General. Eveline wrote letters back home, as well as notes about her life in various Indian territories of the Southwest. As the wife of a higher-ranking officer, conditions were sometimes passable, but her personal life was a tragedy. She bore Andrew five children, of whom five died as babies or children. In 1888, while they were traveling home to New York, Andrew died in her arms on the train. She would also outlive her oldest son, dying both widowed and childless. Despite these tragedies, she was remembered as an articulate woman of command presence, beloved by her large birth family. Her notes and reminiscences remained within her family and were not widely known in her day. They were later compiled as "Cavalry Wife: The Diary of Eveline M. Alexander.

Martha Summerhayes (1844-1926) was born in Nantucket, MA, also to a well-to-do family. She was educated and spent two years in Germany. When she met and married her husband, John Summerhayes, in 1873 his military assignments were to her another reason to travel and experience more of the world. Hayes was first a Lieutenant and, as post-War promotion was slower, attained the rank of Captain. Accommodations for junior officers were little better than those provided for men. Like most Army wives, her life was a series of moves. Flustered over what to pack and what to leave behind, an older military wife advised her to "take it all, it'll get carried along somehow."

Life in Apache country was scary to someone who did not know the ways and customs of the Indians. She saw an Apache woman whose nose had been sliced off (punishment for adultery), and picked up a stinking box thinking it contained rotten cheese. When she gave it to a soldier to dispose of, he opened it and found it contained a severed head! During at least one of their travels between various outposts in Arizona, their wagon train was ambushed. John Summerhayes gave his wife a pistol and told her she'd better learn to use it and fast. He also advised her to save the last bullet for herself. (No, that wasn't a myth. There are many accounts of this. Better to be dead when the Indians got to you, then half-alive and scalped that way). When their son, Jack, was born, Martha had to do the whole delivery by herself because post doctors did not attend childbirths and there were no other women around to help her. John Summerhayes retired from the Army in 1900 and their family returned back to MA, and later settled in NY. When Martha's diary was published as "VanishedCavalry Wife: The Diary of Eveline M. Alexander, 1866-1867 Arizona", she became a best-selling author and instant celebrity, a late but deserved reward Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Womanfor all she had been through.