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If you were lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family at the turn of the century and if you were female, there were certain expectations placed upon you:  you would be well-educated (at Smith College, for example), you would take “the tour” (a year in Europe), you would marry well and have a family (and at a fairly young age), and you would NOT under any circumstances work at an actual job where you earned wages.  Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood grew up together in the wealthy community of Auburn, NY, and followed most of society’s expectations until the age of 29 when, well on their way to spinsterhood, they travelled to Colorado to teach school. Alone. For pay. These two adventurous young women were not satisfied with being society ladies and devoting their lives to charitable work and finding husbands; they were cultured but independent-minded adventurers who had a profound influence on the lives of the children they taught… and they ended up with husbands and families after all.  

Nearly a hundred years after their adventure, author Dorothy Wickenden, the granddaughter and namesake of Dorothy Woodruff, discovered the effervescent letters these two women wrote to their families and began to reconstruct that amazing year of 1916-17 that they spent in the wilds of northwest Colorado. Neither had any experience with teaching, but they plunged in with great enthusiasm, never letting anything keep them from their duties—even blizzards or mudslides. Living with an impoverished yet plucky family of homesteaders, Dorothy and Ros rode horses to school, learned to tame unruly children and dodge the advances of amorous cowboys, and even witnessed the kidnapping and daring escape of a close friend and mine owner. A real sense of community existed in this little settlement. The men, women, and children they encountered did not complain about the harsh living conditions, so they followed their example. They took every new challenge and were excited by it, never shrinking from this rustic new life that was so different from what they had known.  

Ros and Dorothy only taught for that one year since teachers had to retire when they married. They both went on to live long, full lives, but neither ever forgot their adventure in Elkhead nor did the people they met ever forget them. Before Ros died, she had even requested that the Elkhead School be pictured on the cover of the memorial booklet at her funeral. At this service, several of Ros’s and Dorothy’s former pupils spoke of their lasting influence: “Little did I realize at the time the important and lasting influence [they] were going to have, not only on me, but on most youths and many adults of the Elkhead community… I’ll never forget the first morning when…the two new teachers rode up to the school… I don’t believe there ever was a community that was affected more by two people than we were by those two girls.”   

How sad to realize that the epistolary tradition so well mined in this work seems to be lost for all intents and purposes; no treasure-trove of letters will be available to our ancestors. Through these first-person accounts and her own exhaustive research, Wickenden has transported us back to a simpler time when American optimism could be so readily found--from the homesteaders to the industrialists. She recaptures that spirit in spite of the darker underbelly of the development of the West (coal mining, exploitation of workers, etc.) and gives us a broad panorama of what was happening in the country, both east and west.  

One of the loveliest aspects of this tale involves the closeness of Ros’s and Dorothy’s friendship. They went to kindergarten through college together, went to Europe together, went west to teach together, and were only physically separated after marriage. These two ladies had an amazing and admirable 83-year friendship!   

Review by Shirley Wells

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West (Hardcover)

By Dorothy Wickenden

$26.00

ISBN-13: 9781439176580
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Scribner, 6/2011

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