(photo of woman on sulky plow)
Rosie Roessler gives her team a break as she poses for a photo. It took a steady hand and a good driver on this sulky plow to keep the rows straight in 1912. The photo was taken in Prairie County by Evelyn Cameron.
From Women's History Matters:
Historians estimate that up to 18 percent of homesteaders in Montana were unmarried women. Passage of the Homestead Act of 1862 allowed any twenty-one-year-old head of household the right to homestead federal land. Single, widowed, and divorced women fit this description, and they crossed the country to file homestead claims of 160 acres. After the turn of the century, when the Enlarged Homestead Act doubled the acreage to 320, even more women took up free land in Montana. While not all succeeded, those who did proved that women were up to the task.
Rosie Roesler, shown in the picture above in 1912, received her homestead patent for 320 acres in Prairie County in 1915
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MHS Photo Archives #PAC 90-87-GO65.006
