Item Detail
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Stallard, Patricia Yeary
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1942-Present
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MSS SC 2668
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Manuscript
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Patricia Yeary Stallard was born on 1 September 1942. Not much is known about her personal life, but it is known that she attended graduate school for a masters degree in the 1970s, her thesis for which was later published by the Old Army Press in Fort Collins, Co. as a paperback, hard cover, and mass market paperback. A resident of Knoxville Tennessee, Patricia has served as an education specialist with U.S. Navy Recruiting Command in the past. She has spent most if not all her life in the states of Virginia and Tennessee and is married with at least one son.
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This collection contains 2 folders. The first folder is a manuscript. It is a 137-page typescript draft of Patricia Yeary Stallards masters thesis entitled, Glittering Misery: Lives of Army Dependents in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1865-1898. She dates her preface with, Flatwoods, Virginia, June 1977.
The thesis highlights the hardships, challenges and social structure of domestic life in the US Army as it moved through the Western frontier from 1865-1898. As her preface says, plenty has been said about the men in the Indian-Fighting Army, but the stories of their wives and children, who often moved and camped with them, are less often told.
The manuscript is broken into 6 chapters, with the last two both labeled Chapter 5. In the first chapter, the focus is on hardships and lack of comfort found in an Army camp for the average Army dependent. Many Army wives would follow their husbands into the field out of a sense of duty or love. Interestingly enough, though, it was not wives, but only laundresses who had any official recognition within the ranks. Anyone else, including an Army mans family, was considered a camp follower, a title often designated for prostitutes that would follow the companys movements.
The second chapter touches on the experiences of the Officers Ladies. These were women such as Martha Dunham Summerhayes and Elizabeth Burt Custer, among others, who were the wives of the higher-ranking men in the companies and often kept diaries. In many of their accounts, there are instances of attacks from Native Americans on the camp, near-constant exposure to the elements, and meager food stores
Chapter 3 covers the average lives of the wives of the Enlisted men, (for whom Army statistics werent even kept), Laundresses, and Camp Followers. Fewer of these womens stories have survived because fewer of them kept records because many were often not educated enough to do so. On the part of the Laundresses, most of their history is steeped in gossip, highlighting the huge social chasm between them and the women married to higher-ranking officials. They worked hard, however. At first, when the Act of March 16, 1802 was passed, which allowed women to accompany troops as Laundresses in an official capacity, the ratio was 4 women to every 100 men. Over the years, though, that ratio decreased to 1 woman for every 19.5 men.
In Chapter 4, Stallard talks about the experiences of children belonging to these Army families. Children were also classified as Camp Followers, and there was little opportunity for education, especially for young girls. It was a paradise for little boys, though, who would often take advantage of the wide-open spaces to run and play, and they had a path of soldier-hood exemplified for them growing up. There were few family chores as well, due to the strict routines of the Army garrisons. The downsides of childhood in the Army at this time included rampant spread of diseases such as Malaria and a social separateness between children of different ranks that echoed that of the adults.
The fifth chapter deals with the part gossip has to play in the social order of these dependents. In the army, a persons life was rarely private, and gossip would spread like wildfire throughout a camp. An Officers wife in particular would have to tread very carefully, calculating her every move in order to uphold her personal honor and advance the career of her husband. Stories often included sex scandals, alcohol abuse, and other less favorable or honorable relationships and practices among the Officers, Privates, and women. However, Stallard notes that these off-color stories only ever formed a small part of the whole experience of an Army dependent on the Frontier. For the most part, wives were faithful to their men and their duties, sacrificing much personal comfort and well-being to support their husbands in a dangerous and rough world.
There is also a second Chapter 5, incomplete, which goes over the living conditions of an Army family on the Frontier. This chapter talks about housing quality, violent weather, personal and family health, and attacks from Native Americans and animals.
The second folder in this collection contains an interior layout draft of the same thesis, numbering 155 pages of glossy, typescript paper. There is also a printed mockup numbering 160 pages and printed in blue ink. This version of the work includes photographs of some of the people and places mentioned in the work.