Sandra Parker

History is what we choose to tell. Learning about Ohio's nineteenth-century history grew from my participation in Hiram College's 1982 N.E.H. grant for regionalism in the humanities. The years that followed provided time for the absorption of knowledge about diverse women writers who celebrated the culture of the Western Reserve Firelands and the state of Ohio. I published an anthology of these authors, Home Material, and separate collections by two women who were most "lost." Julia L. Dumont was the first woman to write about the Ohio River Valley with romance and realism competing in her early tales. A contrast is Jessie Brown Pounds whose stories late in the century trace changes in northeast Ohio. It has been a giddy experience finding these scattered resources, and most challenging of all was tracing the life of a pioneer child from Rufus Putnam's original settlers--Frances Gage, nee Barker, grew, not just up, but out, defending slaves and victims of domestic violence. The era labeled these reform movements as abolition and temperance. She also wished to empower women's citizenship and voting. Gage grew into mutual support with national leaders--Amelia Bloomer, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton. Most famous for supporting Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman" speech, this reformer finally wrote several novels about early Ohio Valley culture. That this "oak tree" could grow from a pioneer Ohio "acorn" has never ceased to fascinate me.