[COLORADO] Dellie : A Lotus in the Dust

Bradley, Ruth. [COLORADO] Dellie : A Lotus in the Dust. Berkeley, California: Ber-Cal Publishing Company, 1967. First Edition. [11441]

Blue cloth, binding fine, 9 1/4 x 6 1/4 inches, dust jacket with light edge-wear and fading, now in a clear wrapper. 192 clean pp., tight. Very good in good dust-jacket. Hardcover.

The story of a rugged pioneer woman of Colorado, Mary Adelle Blachly (1854-1926), who was born in Siam to missionary parents, was sent to Oberlin College in 1875 for school, and married her cousin in 1877 after just a few weeks' acquaintance. The story gives an account of Dellie's father, a medical missionary who was on friendly terms with the royal family of Siam. She lived a life of hardship on the Colorado frontier, raising eight boys in poverty. Her husband, a banker, was killed in a bank robbery in 1893 - a footnote says, "This was one of the most famous bank robberies in Colorado. The Sharp's rifle which Mr. Simpson used and pictures of the dead bandits are displayed in a case in the Colorado Bank & Trust Co., successor to the Farmers and Merchants Bank at Delta." The book is written by her niece, who had access to the trove of letters and other family writings. 

"Dellie's life gives glimpses into the railroad-building era, the 'boom and bust' towns, the lawless elements of frontier life, the isolation of a homesteader. Crushed by burdens of debt and toil, widowed, this remarkable woman survived to see her eight sons launched on successful careers. Writing with humor and rare insights, Mrs. Bradley depicts the other side of the 'get rich quick' atmosphere of early Colorado." - dj blurb.