Women and men and how they get along, or not, are not just matters for contemplation and commiseration in our personal lives. They are historical questions in the settlement and development of the Great Plains. The homesteading era often featured men going out alone to stake claims. Historically, however, the late nineteenth century in America saw the enshrinement of romantic love as the beau ideal of the full life. Marriage came to be considered a love match, not just an economic alliance. Thus all those bachelor homesteaders in their little old sod shanties on the claim, they longed for their sweethearts to come join them and make their lives complete.
I’m speaking from my reading of an intriguing article by the historian Katherine Parkin on marriage proposals in the early twentieth century when I say, after 1900, romantic love took a hit in public ideals, particularly among young men. Many of them were reluctant to espouse their appointed future. This was a problem, because traditional conceptions of the male as provider dictated that it was the man who rightfully should propose marriage.
Perhaps this accounts for the remarkable enthusiasm on the prairies for certain folk customs having to do with Leap Year. Popular tradition frequently cited two different origins for such customs: the Fifth-Century petition of Saint Bridget to St. Patrick that women should be allowed to propose marriage to men, and a supposed law of Queen Margaret of Scotland in 1228 stipulating that if a woman proposed marriage to a man and he refused, the man either had to pay a tax or make the spurned woman the gift of a fine gown.
Leap Year dances, where women were supposed to ask men to dance rather than the other way around, date from at least the 1780s in America, and they proved particularly popular during the settlement era on the plains. All this is context for consideration of a ballad, or poem, that made the rounds in prairie newspapers in the early 1900s. I find it appearing first in the papers of Iowa and Nebraska in 1908. It begins, in traditional ballad style,
Come all you girls and listen / Just hearken unto me
And I will tell you something / That will make your sorrows flee
I’ve been thinking about it lately / And I’m sure it is a fact
That the boys around this town / Want to try the Leap Year act
A dozen or so subsequent stanzas each describes an individual male in town who would, or should, welcome a proposal. Naming names! In subsequent leap years the ballad travels all over the plains, including to Williston in 1916 and Washburn in 1920. It’s possible to track the targeted men from the ballads into their census returns, draft records, and other granular sources.
So, in Williston, the unidentified balladeer names Will Edgar as a likely prospect, as she says, “because on you he’ll spend his gold.” William Donaldson Edgar, who lived over in Trenton, was a twenty-something farmer from Pennsylvania and a member of the United Brethren Church. Medium height, stout, and according to the draft board, no disabilities. A good, solid prospect!
Or over in Washburn, or rather Coal Harbor, how about Peter Leif, described by the balladeer as “a honey bunch”? A young man from Minnesota, he already was a partner in a general store. He was a long-term prospect, because as time would tell, he would live until 1985.
