Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Woman, Second Edition

When Martha Summerhayes (1844–1926) came as a bride to Fort Russell in Wyoming Territory in 1874, she “saw not much in those first few days besides bright buttons, blue uniforms, and shining swords,” but soon enough the hard facts of army life began to intrude. Remonstrating with her husband, Jack Wyder Summerhayes, that she had only three rooms and a kitchen instead of “a whole house,” she was informed that “women are not reckoned in at all in the War Department.”
Although Martha Summerha...