|
 Thanks
to my eighth grade teacher, I developed a healthy lack
of interest in history until I heard a story about my
great-grandmother, Hattie Inez Brooks Wright,
homesteading by herself in eastern Montana as a young
woman. I had always associated homesteading with covered
wagons not Model Ts so was surprised to find a record of
Hattie’s homestead application dated 1914. Hattie left
no diary and she was too busy raising four kids to talk
much about her time on the prairie. |
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| By the
time I heard about her years of proving up on a claim
near Vida, Montana, she was long gone. But my curiosity
was piqued; I had to know more. Efforts to learn more
about her homestead times felt like detective work. Why
hadn’t anyone told me research could be this much fun?
My three years’ work on Hattie Big Sky involved several
trips to Montana, one by train, as well as countless
hours in wonderfully dusty courthouse records’ rooms and
newspaper office morgues. While I never found out
exactly what my great-grandmother’s adventure was like
for her, I was able to piece together what it might have
been like thanks to the diaries and journals of others
who put down roots in “next year country.” My hope is
that this book is seen as a tribute to honyockers
everywhere. |
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