Ladies of Our Valley

A lot is owed to the trailblazing, adventurous, frontier women of the nineteenth century. Arriving from countries both near and far, of all ages, with little to nothing or sometimes towing a piano and with a child on her hip and another by the hand, the frontier woman cleared a pathway to the west. Today, the twenty-first century woman is in almost every conceivable place and profession because her frontier predecessor stepped out of the confines of her kitchen; sometimes barefoot and laced in a corset.

Our own Santa Maria Valley was flush with the pioneering spirit that transformed dusty, blustery, and seemingly barren spaces into the prosperous, beautiful Central Coast it is today. These westering women imposed standards of living that men had grown unaccustomed to after years of roaming the backwaters and the wilds of open land. The ladies were not down for bypassing all the comforts and conveniences over a sheer lack of concern for what might be called the "niceties." They were very persuasive to those frontier men who wanted to become husbands and fathers. If a man was willing to take a wife, it meant he was prepared to build her a home, a town, a school; in short, a decent life.

This work is a biographical and historical account of 35 of the Santa Maria Valley's early frontier women, their families, accomplishments, and contributions. Ms. Ransick draws upon an abundance of reference material in developing the individual narratives, and drafts her conclusions in clear and succinct biographies.