A Lady's Ranche Life in Montana (1887)

In 1884 Randall and her husband settled on a ranch in Montana hoping to make their fortune in the livestock boom. Randall s letters home to England describe the practical affairs of daily life, rural social interactions, and the natural world around her. These Letters by a young English bride (a "lady") who along with her "domestics" went out to Montana with her husband immediately after her marriage are a faithful and unvarnished Record of a Settler's Life. A portion of the book is devoted to problems with her domestic help who she complained were "getting very independent and troublesome; I can hardly get any work out of Mrs. M , and I expect we shall have to part with them. They are talking of going, and I for one shan't miss them;... How can anyone keep servants in their place, when the people, whom we associate with, invite them to their houses as equals? ...it is no use trying to have them out here; even good English ones would be spoilt in a month. The natives are very queer, independent, and rough; it is no use trying to make them into servants, and very disagreeable to have half-educated, ill-mannered sort of people to eat and sit with you; and if you had English ones, the natives would soon make them discontented."

This book originally published by W. H. Allen, in 1887, has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.