17 March 2007
Genealogy Friends of Plano Libraries, Inc. hosts a free genealogy seminar, "True Women & Westward Expansion" byDr. Adrienne Caughfield, from 9:30 a.m. to noon in the Gladys Harrington Program Room, 1501 E. 18th Street, Plano, Texas 75075. Caughfield is director of academic programs at the Farrell-Wilson farmstead, now called the Heritage Farmstead Museum at Plano City Park.In her book, True Women and Westward Expansion, she mines the diaries and letters of some ninety Texas women to uncover the ideas and enthusiasms they brought to the Western frontier.Caughfield sheds light on women's activism (the flip side of domesticity), attitudes toward race and "civilization," the tie between a vision of a unified continent and a cultivated wilderness, and republican values.She offers anew understanding of not only gender roles in the West but also the impulse for expansionism itself.

For further information, contact GenFriends@tx.rr.com
or 972-940-9280 or visit the Web site at
www.rootsweb.com/~txgfpl/