Anne Ellis
'Plain Anne Ellis':
More About the Life of an Ordinary Woman
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Riverside Press, 1931)
"Ed's was the first death in our family when there was sufficient money for funeral expenses."1 This is how we first meet Anne Ellis in her book Plain Anne Ellis. Her husband has died only recently, she rescues her nephew from drowning in her well, and she is flat broke with two small children to support. Already Anne doesn't seem very plain does she? Anne's lifelong struggle to survive poverty is really the story of many, but Anne had the graciousness to share it.
Born in Missouri in 1875, Anne's young life was no easier than her adult life. Traveling by ox-cart over the Great Plains to settle in Bonanza, Colorado, Anne and her extended family found Bonanza to be a hard life. Life became even harder when Anne's father deserted the family and left Anne's mother to support and raise Anne and her six siblings. By eighteen years old Anne's mother had passed away and left her to care for the family. Always seeking to improve her lot in life, Anne decided on a marriage that she hoped would enable her to gain some financial stability. She left her siblings behind in the care of her father and moved with her husband, George Fleming, to Chance in the Colorado Rockies.
George, a miner, failed to make it in Chance when their mining claim produced nothing, from here he moved Anne and their two small children to Denver, hoping to gain a grubstake for Alaska. Failing again, George moved back to Cripple Creek, leaving Anne and the children to survive on fifteen cents a day. But Anne took matters into her own hands, sold her watch for travel money and joined her husband. Soon afterwards Anne's husband is killed in a mining explosion leaving Anne once again penniless. Anne realized she couldn't afford the luxury of mourning and opened a bakery in hopes of supporting her family. When this failed she was asked to open a boardinghouse for miners, and here Anne was able to support herself for ten years. During this time, Anne also met and married her second husband, Herbert Ellis who later died after surgery.
Anne, now more accomplished as a cook, worked at mining camps, for sheep shearers and construction crews. But her health became fragile and she decided to seek work elsewhere. From the money she had been able to accumulate Anne decided to run for Treasurer of Saguache County in Colorado. It is during this campaign that we see the various sides of Anne's personality. We know her to be hardworking, determined and tenacious but now we see an even more determined Anne, one who had little formal education but sought to win an election even her family and friends thought was out of her reach.
Traveling throughout the county to meet voters and introduce herself, Anne often found herself in unique situations, she even slept in "a third grade boardinghouse, which was filled with men, potato-diggers, sheep men, railroad hands-more votes here than in a better place."2 Her sometimes self-deprecating humor reveals a side of Anne that enabled her to take risks such as the campaign for Treasurer. Anne not only won the election through interesting means but also continued on as treasurer for three more terms.
Ellis' first few months as treasurer she recalls as "a horror of work and worry."3 Missing receipts for her first statement to the county left her fearing a jail sentence and her lack of math skills was a challenge but Anne succeeded. Her dream of sending her children to college was fulfilled due to this position. Ill health forced Anne to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico and it is here that encouraged by friends, and once again in need of money, Anne begins to write her memoirs. She published three books, The Life of an Ordinary Woman, Plain Anne Ellis, and Sunshine Preferred. In 1938, she received an honorary degree at the University of Colorado and at the age of sixty-three she died in Denver, Colorado.
Anne Ellis has left behind a chronicle of her life through her autobiographies but more importantly a precious chance to view the life lived by so many women of her time. Poverty and a lack of education did not deter her from living life to the fullest. Her views on women, the Equal Rights Amendment, men (both good and bad), children, poverty, the disparity between the haves and the haves not, enlightens the reader to the concerns of women of her time. Ellis leaves little to the imagination with vivid depictions of the landscape and of the views held by some in relation to minority people. Anne Ellis must have known that although her life may be ordinary it was a woman's life, a western woman's life, and that story needed to be told. Anne Ellis lived from 1875 to 1938.
Notes:
1 Anne Ellis, Plain Anne Ellis, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press, 1931), p. 8
2 Ibid., p.145
3 Ibid., p.168
Further Readings:
Catherine Lavender, "Not-So-Plain Anne Ellis," in Plain Anne Ellis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997)
Elliot West, "Foreword," in Life of an Ordinary Woman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980)
Anne Ellis, "Plain Anne Ellis: Master of Letters," Colorado Quarterly Vol. 6, No.1 (Summer 1957): 31-45
Anne Matlack, "The Spirit of Anne Ellis," Colorado Quarterly 4/1 (Summer1955): 61-72
Joan Jensen, One Foot on the Rockies: Women and Creativity in the Modern American West, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), pp. 69, 121-123
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