Determined Women

Destiny made her one of the shining stones in the great mosaic of American pioneer history, a girl born in a mud and wattle hut in Ostfriesland on the edge of the North Sea. This in part is her story, one of hardship and danger, of grief and celebration, of seizing fate and refusing to let go. Ickka Eilerts Buss never stopped and never faltered. Two of her children would leave the farms that Ickka created to marry the offspring of another Ostfriesen emigrant. Behrendji Berends Müller, too, overcame hardship and want, her otherwise radically different narrative as compelling as that of her fellow countrywoman. Determined Women tracks their lives and those of members of their intertwined families, their stories reflective of the broader mid-nineteenth century emigrant experience and its legacy-our American West.