The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America

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Her father, who had come to act as an interim pastor at the First Congregational Church, Hamilton, died a year or so after his arrival. While monarchs have found homes across the globe and are at a low risk of extinction, their numbers are falling.

Now widowed and aged 57, the 1901 census captures postmaster and grocer, William Wilkins, at the ‘Post Office’ in Church Street, Great Ellingham.

The national head-count of 1851 finds 7 year old William with his parents, Thomas and Harriet Wilkins, and 12 year old brother James in Long Street. Given that Alice is not described as a ‘visitor’, I think it likely that Alice is living with Henry and Eliza Cattermole on more of a permanent basis. In the telling of the realization of an against-all-odds dream of reaching California’s “land of sunshine” from a remote Maine farm by horse that took over a year, the book becomes more than one woman’s extraordinary tale to social and cultural commentary of an America at the cusp of sweeping changes. Her poems appeared often in the Spectator and Journal of Commerce and the Canadian Illustrated News newspapers.

The Wilkins family is one of a few families who can trace their ancestors for several generations in Great Ellingham. Her classical and musical knowledge enabled her to conduct a seminary for young ladies and teach music in the family home. Two new books tell true stories of long-distance travelers – women who were determined and moving with purpose – who wouldn’t let obstacles stand in their way. Harriett Annie Wilkins, The great railway catastrophe of the 12th March, 1857, on the Desjardin Canal Bridge, on the line of the Great Western Railway (1857?Barclay, the children’s librarian in the Malaga Cove Library in Palos Verdes, California, and my mother.

Material from the Associated Press is Copyright © 2024, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Soon after her arrival in Hamilton she began an association with the Spectator and Journal of Commerce which was to last 30 years: she regularly submitted poems to the “Poet’s Corner” and all but one of her five books of poetry (issued as by “Harriett Annie”) were printed in the Spectator office.

However by the time the First Edition of the Ordnance Survey Map (1879-1886) was drawn up, the house had been built. Ann Amelia Wilkins was laid to rest in the churchyard of St James’s Church on the very last day of December, 1893. The more people she met and the more the news got out about her journey, the more of a celebrity she became, which did help with finding lodging and care for herself and her animals. Letts honors her subjects--Wilkins, 1950s America, and that moment when range gave way to road, and horse to car--with an author's hand and a historian's eye. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television's influence was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.