Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, 1871-1888 by Frances M. A. Roe (Free Audio Book)
Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, 1871-1888 by Frances M. A. Roe – A free audiobook
Narrated by Sue Anderson
This audiobook is a collection of letters written by Frances M.A. Roe, a young wife of a West Point Army Officer. Her husband’s career took the couple to the frontier garrisons which are now known as Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The letters were written by Frances for her family who lives back in upstate New York and details her experiences in the new frontier from 1871 to 1888. Her letters are filled with fascinating stories that she experienced firsthand in the great frontier. Even with the great difference between her lives in New York to her new life in the West, she took to this quickly. She told of how she learned how to shoot, ride horseback, go fly fishing for trout and hunting buffalos. Her letters to her family showed a different side to the life in the frontier and life in the army. Her experiences with the Native American tribes like the Apache, Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Kiowa from their ceremonial visits and the Indian way of warfare. She tells of the black cavalry troops that she met at Camp Supply in the Indian Territory. The Chinese cooks and there exotic menu along with several enlisted Polish and Irish men that were doing kitchen duty.
Her letters also chronicles the change in the West. She included in one letter of the steady and inevitable disappearance of the Buffalo heard, the decline of Indian tribes and the arrival of the railroads. Florence’s emotion can clearly be felt in her letters which reader, Sue Anderson, captured beautifully. This is a highly interesting collection of letters that shows the diverse land that was the Frontier West from a young woman filled with passion and child like curiosity.
You can listen below (it may take a moment to appear) or download here.
Book versions to buy from Amazon:
Paperback – April 4, 2007
Hardcover – December 1, 1981
