Refining Rural Spaces: Women and Vernacular Gentility in the Great Plains, 1880-1920

In 1887 the Plains photographer Solomon Butcher met the David Hilton family in Custer County, Nebraska. Mrs. Hilton desired a photograph to send to relatives back East, but felt embarrassed by the family\u27s sod dwelling. She insisted that Butcher not take a photo of the house, but asked the men to drag the Hiltons\u27 beautiful new pump organ out into the field, where the family could pose around the instrument. The sod house remained outside the photograph, and after the session the men returned the organ to the house. To Mrs. Hilton, the organ became her personal symbol of aspirations to middle-class refinement in spite of harsh conditions. While the Hiltons certainly could not control the circumstances of living in a dirt home, Mrs. Hilton could control the public display of refinement in her rural Plains home. Women who settled in the Great Plains between 1880 and 1920 often encountered the harshest of conditions and yet still sought to achieve gentility through various civilizing processes. These included adaptations of domestic refinement, access to material goods and literary culture, and the performance of civilizing manners and behavior that represented proper Euro-American civilization