Lida Murry Smith

My grandparents moved from Missouri to Texas in 1905 in covered wagons. Lida and Andrew J Smith, two boys and eight girls, the youngest, 6 and the oldest, 22. They sold their farm in Missouri and moved by three covered wagons with the kids, three dogs, two pigs, two cows and six horses. The trip took 7 weeks, and they were attacked by Indians in Oklahoma. The twin 14-year-old girls were kidnapped and raped, and the family ran through a tornado. Lida, nonetheless, spent her time taking care of the family and advocating for women’s suffrage which did not pass until 1920 with the 19th Constitutional Amendment.

They were all Baptists and deeply religious, and the teenage girls were all looking for boys much of the time. My dad, one of the brothers, worked in a store called Doan’s Crossing just over the border in Northern Texas, about 10 miles from Vernon. Doan’s was on the Chisolm Trail and served over two million cattle and the cowboys who herded them from Texas to market in Missouri. Lida is the hero of the book, working on the farms and raising a family of ten kids while advocating for women’s rights. It’s a good story-- fiction, but based on real characters, my family and a real trip from Missouri to Texas. Full of drama, romance, and suspense, once you start reading, you won’t put it down.