About “Elsie – The Arizona Adventures of a Frontier Teacher 1913-1916″
Most people have heard the expression “Even If I live to be 100 I’ll never forget…” My grandmother, Elsie, lived to be nearly 100 years old, and for her, three years of these years were just unforgettable. She left a record of those three memorable years in her diary from 1913 -1916 and in about thirty letters written home from the “new” state of Arizona. The letters reveal a drama-filled story of a vivacious, charming, young teacher who was loved both by her students and a couple of Arizona’s adventuresome young men.
I invite you to join this exciting journey with me. The links above will reveal more and more each week about Elsie’s world in the Old Wild West – so be sure to visit often!
Barbara Anne Waite
We look forward to reading more about Elsie’s grand adventures!
Thanks Dan. It has really been an adventure doing all the research and discovering so many surprises as I uncovered the history behind “Elsie”.
I didn’t know you were so close to being finished with this book! I have been waiting for it for 20 years! When will I be able to BUY it?
Elsie will be available on Amazon ,hopefully in late September!
Looking forward to reading more of Elsie’s adventures. Thank you for her journal quotes from her visits to Palomar that I used on http://www.mypalomarmountain.com I appreciate all you are doing to get her work published. What a treasure that will be!
I look forward to reading all I can about this subject. Thanks!!
Would rather read works like this than fiction.
I will certainly want to read this book! How interesting! Can’t wait. I also have a blog of my card making. stampwillydesigns.blogspot.com.
Hugs, April
I look forward to reading this book.
Looking forward to reading your book. It should be very interesting reading.
This sounds interesting, Barb. Good for you!
What a treasure, I can’t wait to read about our truly great Great Grandmother.
The research has really been interesting. I have learned much as I have tried to understand what it was like in those first years of Arizona’s statehood.
Barb,
I am so excited that you finally were able to finish the book about your grandmother’s years of teaching. I am sure it made you feel much closer to her. I am looking forward to reading it!
Gwen
Barb,
It was so good to visit with you while in Antigua. I really enjoyed seeing the pictures and hearing some of the stories of your grandmother’s adventures and loves. I’m looking forward to seeing what you put here on the website and then to reading your book.
I am so looking forward to reading this book!! Can’t wait until it comes out in Sept.!!
Barb.. Sorry I didn’t answer sooner… I had a bunch of company in August, and we were in the Sierras Aug 20th thru 27th. Ray finally told me of the email and here I am! Definitely want to get this book!!
Love and best wishes….
Shirley
How awesome ! I am so excited for you ! Love ya !
I’m so glad I found your blog! What an amazing story you’re telling. Can’t wait to follow it.
Thanks Leah. “Elsie -Adventures of an Arizona Schoolteacher 1913-1916″ went up on Amazon a week ago. We have been away the last two weeks. We traveled where Elsie taught and visited museums and the AZ. capital gift shop and some libraries and other sites that will sell Elsie. Exciting to realize AZ. Centennial is 3 months away and not hardly any books deal with Arizona’s earliest years as a state. Oak Creek Canyon with the fall colors was spectacular last week. I am on cloud 9 to have finally accomplished what I set out to do so many years ago.
This looks fascinating, to me in particularl since I have published a very similar book about my mother’s journey from Siberia to Tel Aviv as a child. I am going right away to buy Elsie!
Thanks so much Ilil, I do trust you will enjoy Elsie. The little details found in a journal or letters are just so interesting. When you go deeper and research those details history suddenly becomes very real. I just recently drove on the road that must have closely resembeled Elsie’s first trip to Jerome, AZ. by narrow guage railraod. The hairpin turns were just as she had described. Some things about Jerome have changed but my eyes caught some of the things that she must have been amazed at. The beauty of Oak Creek Canyon in the fall simply is beyond description. I found myself wishing I could see it by horse and wagon as she first seen it.
Extremely interesting, can’t wait to read more.
I am excited that it is on Amazon, that is the place to be.
Thanks Patricia, I am awaiting reviews to see what readers think. I appreciate the interest.
Barbara,
I’m so interested in reading your book about your Grandmother. I remember meeting her many years ago on Palomar when your folks had a cabin next to my parent’s cabin who were Walt and Mollie Ekberg. They often spent time with Katie and Chuck, and that’s how we met “Mrs. Roberts”, as we called her. What a wonderful project for you to do and I can’t wait to get the book.
Alicelynn Ekberg Cockrill
I do hope you enjoy AliceLynn- It has been mailed to you. It was a delightful project- filled with surprises as I did the research. Please let me know what you think after reading it.
I am thrilled to now own my own copy of a book about my Mother’s favorite teacher. My Mother spoke fondly so very often about Miss Hayes. What a thrill to learn more about Miss Hayes from other than through the eyes of my Mother.
I am thrilled you are pleased. Eva was such a blessing to me. From the moment I found Eva through the newspaper I knew this should be a book. Your family added much to the history included in the book.
I enjoyed very much the reading of this book. The Girdner’s are my people, Stanley was my Dad and dear aunt Eva, such a sweet person. The description of the old home place brings back loads of memories. I was born very near the location of that schoolhouse.
Thank You
Barb, I finished your book, “Elsie,” today. I was so intrigued I could hardly put it down, so just took the morning off and finished it. I loved the way you guided the reader and enticed us. It was like watching a mini-series. I found it all so interesting since we have been to many of the places where the story unfolds. I have to say it had a bit of a shock factor in it. I could relate to her heaviness of heart, and then share in her joy. I found applicable wisdom in her observations too. Great job! Will be anxiously awaiting the sequel.
Barb, I finished your book, “Elsie,” recently and have passed to a long time AZ teacher. The book was really interesting since I live in AZ. Will be anxiously awaiting the sequel.
Your book is facinating. I just finished it last night. As this is Arizona’s Centennial and I am a school teacher in Arizona I am going to recommend your book to my students. They should be facinated as to the differences between then and now. Maybe they will even look at our scenery a bit different after seeing it through Elsie’s eyes. Thank you for all of the time and effort you took to put these memoirs together. It was a special treat reading about someone who lived during the same ere as my grandmother.
Thanks so much Lynda. Elsie would be so pleased to know Arizona students were reading her history. Letters during that time were done thoughtfully and treasured. I am so fortunate she had saved that part of her life in letters for others to know what that era was like.
Hi Barb, I am so excited about this book. I am going to order it. Dale and I were with the Bailey bunch on
Palomar, and I knew Elsie. I visited her in the care
facility many times and we would sit outside and talk.
She had so many wonderful stories. I have met you several times when you were visiting your Mom and Dad.
I have so many memories of our days on the mountain.
My kids will be getting the book too. Janet and Judy
rented the little cabin from Katie and Charlie. So
excited about this.
I’m really looking forward to reading about your Grandmother’s three year period in those beginning days of Arizona. Would also love to hear more about your time in Antigua. It is good that you have recorded this book of your grandmother- so others who come behind can be blessed by it.
I wrote a book about my grandmother who was a pioneer missionary to China in the early 1900′s- the book is called Letta In China- in researching and writing the book, I was so amazed by God’s faithfulness. I realized in the end, the book was not so much about my grandmother, but about God’s faithfulness to her!
I loved the book, I think that “Elsie” did what we all wish we could have done when young and able, live an adventure! And those of us who have had adventures need to follow her and write them down. I loved the way that some days all she wrote was one or two words but I could follow her line of thought anyway. It was honest, romantic, historic, exciting and not fiction! Wow, looking forward to the stories and notes to follow!
My friend, Marcie VerPloeg, found your book and recommended it to me! I am anxious to read your book; I am a child of Arizona – born in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1945. Congratulations on writing your book!
I hope you enjoy it Roberta. Please let me know when you finish reading it if you found it interesting. I am so excited to be doing a booksigning at Costco in Prescott April 14th. Marcie said something that made me realize I should take the diary, photos and letters in a notebook so folks can see they are genuine.
Enjoyed my Kindle book about Elsie, we winter in Arizona & have been to Jerome and area talked about in the story.
Thanks for writing the book for our enjoyment.
Barbara: Finding your book “Elsie” at The Old Livery Mercantile store in Wickenburg (which was mentioned in Elsie’s diary) was one of the highlights of my recent Arizona trip to see a friend of 40+ years. Two things on your cover caught my eye: the photo of your grandmother, with her intelligent, earnest, and very pretty look, and the year 1916, the year my dad (who died 3 years ago) was born. Also, your back cover material is very persuasive to anyone interested in people, teaching, history, Arizona, and/or young love. The last item was interesting to me because my 2007 novel “To Become a Priest–a Love Story” (also on amazon.com) included that theme in a very different way.
And your book certainly did not disappoint me. I read it in almost every free moment–while riding the exercycle, lying in bed, watching TV, etc. Elsie had to have been a terrific teacher to have her kids remember so much about her after 75 years. That’s just amazing–and delightful. Even though I no longer shared her religious beliefs, I kept in touch with the wonderful nun who taught me in 5th, 6th, and 7th grades (1953-56, and visited her a few months before she died a couple of years ago. And she was invited and able to attend the 35th high school reunion of our class in 1996. She was special, and such teachers are rare. So I was sorry to see that Elsie quit teaching after only three years of having such a positive influence on children.
Some of the lines in her diary and letters are classics. I loved how her mother advised her to save her sore eyes by writing “postals” (postcards) instead of letters. I’ll be presenting a program at our county historical society on May 17 about collecting vintage postcards (Elsie’s school-teaching era occurred during the Golden Age of Postcards–they’ve been called the “emails” of that time) and will include her mother’s advice in my presentation.
But mostly, I think, I was interested because of poor Karl. And poor Elsie. There’s so much that Elsie’s diary and letters don’t tell us about what went wrong with their relationship. (I wish she hadn’t burned Karl’s letters, but it was probably inevitable.)I suspect she was trying to convince herself that she wanted only friendship, but her feelings obviously went a lot deeper than that, as you found out when the aged Elsie started crying at your innocent question so many years after she last saw Karl. I identified with him, standing in the field immobilized by his love and his helplessness in doing anything about it. As you noted, he was a very sensitive man, and I suspect his emotions were very strong. His collapse wasn’t totally unexpected. Elsie was pretty, intelligent, stable, and a great deal of fun. I don’t doubt that Elsie had a good and happy life with Jack, but humans can certainly love more than one person at a time, and I suspect Elsie never really lost her love for Karl. You can see it hinted at in her diary where she says so much in refusing to say anything, or refers to thinking about “someone,” or trails off with ellipses.
Thank you for your work on the book, which must have been (and probably still is) fascinating as you continue to find more details. I know how much work it takes to bring about a book from my novel and the two books about Janesville (Wis.) that my wife, Judy, and I did for Arcadia Publishing. Congratulations and best wishes with it. I’ll be ordering one from you for my sister. (And don’t be afraid to propose book signings in stores who carry your books. You don’t have to wait for them to approach you. Of course, sometimes they fizzle. Other writers have told me they shared my experience of having had a true book signing in which we signed exactly one book. But even then, comments from even one reader can make your day.)