Departmental Honors Project Title
Date of Award
Spring 2015
Degree Type
Honors Project
School
College of Liberal Arts
First Advisor
Susie Steinbach
Abstract
Mary Jane Folsom’s life in the St. Croix River Valley demonstrates the previously uninvestigated complexities of life on the American Frontier in the nineteenth century. Previous scholars of the Frontier have all assumed the traditional East to West model of movement, but this model fails to recognize the many directions people took to reach their final destinations or the influences they brought with them. Before further research is conducted on the American Frontier, scholars must answer the question of how people, objects, and ideas actually travelled through the Frontier. This paper uses Mary Jane’s correspondence with her family to investigate this question. Her letters show that although there was a larger East to West wave, movement actually occurred in all directions, and although she lived far from her family in the East and in the far West, Mary Jane was able to influence and be influenced by her family, complicating how scholars study and interpret influences on the American Frontier.
Recommended Citation
Yetter, Taylor M., "The Lady on Angel Hill: Mary Jane Folsom and Movement in the Nineteenth Century St. Croix River Valley" (2015). Departmental Honors Projects. 32.
https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/dhp/32
dc_type
text
dc_publisher
DigitalCommons@Hamline
dc_format
application/pdf
dc_source
Departmental Honors Project