Undaunted, A Norwegian Woman in Frontier Texas

Charles H. Russell

CHARLES H. Russell, a retired college dean and professor of history, holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University. His interest in Waerenskjold is shared with his Norwegian wife, Inger, who helped him translate Waerenskjold's writing as he did the research for this book.

Elise Waerenskjold is known to fans of Texas women, writers as "the lady with the pen”, from the title of a book of her writings. A forward-looking journalist, she sent letters and articles back to Norway, encouraging others to follow her footsteps to Texas, where a small colony of Norwegian settlers was making a new life along---but distinct from----other European immigrants.

Undaunted is the first full biography of Waerenskjold during her Texas years, a life story that shows much about Texas, especially in the Norwegian colonies, from 1847 to the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, it tells the story of a strong and independent thinker who championed women's rights, who was pro-Union and against slavery (though her husband was in the Confederate army and was subsequently murdered in Reconstruction era violence), and who left an intriguing body of writing about life on the edges of Texas settlement.

Charles H. Russell's vivid account of Waerenskjold describes not only the influence among her countrymen but also her own life, which was a saga of considerable drama itself. Russell offers a clear and entraining window onto immigrant life in frontier Texas and the issues that shaped women's lives and elicited their talents.

Waerenskjold in 1855 Texas