Faith and Perseverance: The Story of Eliza Jane Wilder. Prairie Kin, #6

Before she was the stern but steady "Miss Wilder" in Little Town on the Prairie, Eliza Jane Wilder was a real woman who lived an extraordinary life of courage, conviction, and change. Born in 1850 near Burke, New York, Eliza grew up in a family that believed in hard work and education. She began teaching at just nineteen, guiding students in one-room schoolhouses from New York to Minnesota and eventually across the windswept plains of Dakota Territory, where she became De Smet's first teacher.
But Eliza's story did not end on the prairie. After claiming and patenting her own homestead; a rare achievement for a woman of her time, she worked in Washington, D. C., supported women's rights, and later built a new life in Louisiana, where she married, raised a son, and weathered devastating personal loss with quiet strength. Her long life stretched from the age of lanterns and sod houses to the dawn of radio and automobiles.
Through it all, Eliza remained true to her purpose: to teach, to endure, and to build something lasting wherever she went. Told with rich historical detail and drawn from letters, records, and family accounts, Eliza Jane Wilder Thayer: A Life Between Frontiers reveals the untold story of a woman who helped shape both her family's legacy and the American frontier itself.