Elinore Pruitt Stewart (1876-1933) was born in U.S. Indian Territory. In 1909, a recent widow and single mother, she accepted a job as housekeeper to a wealthy cattleman in Burntfork, Wyoming. There she she filed on her own land and recorded details of her life on her small ranch in letters. Though not originally intended for publication, Stewart later did publish collections of her letters in Letters of a Woman Homesteader (1914) and Letters on an Elk Hunt (1915).