Linda Berger

Thursdays, February 25 - March 25    1:00 p.m - 3:00 p.m.     5 sessions    
King’s Chapel Parish House, 64 Beacon Street

Sacagawea, kidnapped as an adolescent and sold as a slave to a French-Canadian fur trader, is best known for her role as interpreter for Lewis and Clark on their journey west in 1804. We are going to look at her marriage and her role as a wife.

This course will also discuss the marriages of Narcissa Whitman, who married
to be allowed to become a member of the Protestant missionary to Indian peoples, and to travel to Oregon in 1836; Elizabeth Bacon Custer, wife of General George Armstrong Custer, who maintained the image of a model 19th century wife and of a devoted widow for fifty-seven years; Alice Kirk Grierson, a strong and supportive wife of a commanding officer in the U.S. Army, who lived on remote western military outposts, while balancing the role of officer’s wife and mother; and finally, Annie Oakley, a woman who managed to succeed in a man’s world when 19th century attitudes did not allow it, and a marriage that lasted her entire life.

We will read from letters, diaries, personal accounts and historical fiction. Everyone is encouraged to read One Thousand White Women: the Journals of May Dodd, by Jim Fergus and The Colonel’s Lady: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson, edited by Shirley Anne Leckie.

Linda Berger is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She has a B.S. and a M.S. in education and engaged in doctoral studies in educational psychology. This is her fourth course teaching about pioneer women for Beacon Hill Seminars.