Elinore Pruitt Stewart
| Elinore Pruitt Stewart | |
|---|---|
The Stewart family in 1913: Elinore; Clyde; Clyde, Jr.; Calvin; and Jerrine.
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| Born |
Elinore Pruitt June 3, 1876 White Bead Hill, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory |
| Died | October 8, 1933 (aged 57) Rock Springs, Wyoming |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Elinore Rupert |
| Occupation | Wyoming homesteader and writer |
| Years active | 1909–15 |
| Notable work | Letters of a Woman Homesteader |
Elinore Pruitt Stewart (born Elinore Pruitt; June 3, 1876 – October 8, 1933) was a homesteader in Wyoming, and a memoirist who between 1909 and 1914 wrote letters describing her life there to a former employer in Denver, Colorado. Those letters, which reveal an adventurous, capable, and resourceful woman of lively intelligence, were published in two collections in 1914 and 1915. The first of those collections, Letters of a Woman Homesteader, was the basis of the 1979 movie Heartland.
Elinore Pruitt was born on June 3, 1876 in White Bead Hill, which was then a settlement in Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, and as of 2016[update] is an abandoned township in Garvin County, Oklahoma (founded 1906). Her father died in the late 1870s on Army service near the Mexican border. Shortly afterwards, her mother, Josephine Courtney Pruitt, married her husband's brother, Thomas Isaac Pruitt; and bore eight more children. Elinore was educated for a few years at Pierce Institute near White Bead Hill, until that grammar school closed in 1889. In 1893, her mother died of complications from childbirth; in 1894, her stepfather died in a work accident; leaving the orphaned Elinore responsible for her younger siblings, with only her grandparents available for support.
Around 1902, she married Harry Cramer Rupert, then 48 years old. He died in a railroad accident before their daughter, Mary Jerrine, was born (February 10, 1906, reportedly in Oklahoma City). She then relocated to Denver, Colorado, where she worked as a laundress, and then in permanent employment as housekeeper for Mrs. Juliet Coney, a widowed schoolteacher from Boston, Massachusetts.
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