History from the Inside-Out: Writing the History of Women in Rural America

for a new history of the inarticulate. Certainly American rural farm women, who until well into the twentieth century constituted a majority of the female population, are among the most underrepresented of all Americans in the standard histories. In part this reflects gaps in the documentary record. Some rural women-Native Americans, AfroAmericans, Chicanas, Mexicanas, and Hispanics-have suffered a historical silence in direct relation to the social conditions that kept them nearly totally illiterate. Even among Euro-Americans, only a few country left written records, for even white female illiteracy was commonplace until at least the second half of the nineteenth century.' Combine illiteracy with farm work loads that kept even scribbling women too busy to write much, and cultural attitudes that consistently devalued and their documents, and it is a wonder that we have any historical materials at all. Documents there are, however, and if we consider the factors operating against them, they exist in surprising quantity. There are, first, the basic documents of social history: the census schedules, probate materials, and the tracings of individuals and families in the official record. Used carefully these provide the necessary skeleton for women's, as well as men's, social history. There are reminiscences, autobiographies, and oral testimonies transcribed by family members and antiquarians long before historians seriously considered oral history. Even male accounts of local and personal happenings contain valuable