Myrna Shafer Carpita
In 1892, Maggie Halbert left her home and the newly-settled farmlands of North-central Kansas for the rugged and unsettled regions of the new state of Montana. She bravely ventured from a reasonably-civilized community into rough-hewn and hastily-built mining and ranching habitations resting in the valleys and on the mountainsides around Wise River, Montana. The youngest of seven children, Maggie faced this unknown and untamed environment to take her first teaching job, fresh out of high school. Maggie Halbert Hand was a contemporary of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the “Little House on the Prairie” books. Like Ingalls Wilder, Maggie was a recorder of the history of her people and times—especially regarding the settlement of the American Old West. Her compilation details the stories of an American family’s survival, growth, and experiences during the settlement of the U.S. frontier. It is a story of courage, perseverance and determination, not uncommon to American families, but thoroughly recorded through the eyes a frontierswoman. Maggie’s winsome story details how one family was affected by, and left its own mark, on such great American experiences as the Gold Rush of 1848, the Civil War, of mining and ranching in Montana, the Great Depression, and the first and second World Wars. She introduces her readers to quirky characters, family dynamics, and the indispensable solace and support of the community in the lives of pioneering women. In the first half of the book, Maggie gives a rare glimpse into the lives of post-Revolutionary war pioneers—especially that of her mother, Susan (Shirley) Halbert. She presents her mother’s resourcefulness, industry, savvy, foresight, and determination to hold a family together, especially during her husband Enos Halbert’s absences from Southern Indiana prospecting, soldiering and scouting for a better life for his family. Maggie’s father displayed his own ambition and moxie, vision and leadership as a skilled farmer, Civil War captain, and wagon train foreman. The second-half of the book details Maggie’s domestic life in Montana, from her meeting, courtship, and marriage to Horace Hand, to early mining ventures, and establishing ranches in Southwest Montana. Maggie recounts aspects of raising children, improving property and life, industrial growth, economic ebbs and flows, and technologic developments from the turn of the 20th Century to the first hints of the Cold War. Maggie’s story is enhanced by the tireless efforts of her great-granddaughter Myrna (Shafer) Carpita, who painstakingly deciphered and typed Maggie’s handwritten manuscript, and annotated it with family letters, diary entries, legal records, photographs, newspaper clippings, and interviews. Carpita chose to preserve the charm of Maggie’s stories by transcribing Maggie’s account’s word-for-word, maintaining Maggie’s idiosyncratic spellings and colloquialisms. Maggie’s matter-of-fact style will leave readers feeling like they’re sitting at the kitchen table listening to Maggie, Horace, and their friends and family spin their yarns of yore. As Maggie, herself declared, “Those days are only remembered by a few now. The first settlers are the ones that stand the hardship of faraway places. It takes a real pioneer to venture in a new country.”
