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Acknowledgments When you take as long as I have to write this book, you have a lot of friends, mentors, and colleagues to acknowledge, and I gratefully do so here. I had the great luck to attend the University of Pennsylvania and study with Richard S. Dunn, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Robert Blair St. George, and Michael Zuckerman, four outstanding scholars who were always generous and patient with their dullest student. Mary Maples Dunn became an unofficial mentor, as she and Richard together offered me hospitality , guidance, and the occasional sinecure to help pay my bills. I remain forever grateful for the wonderful example they were of two renowned historians who were also kind and generous mentors. My friends at Penn helped me more than they will know, especially Rosalind Beiler, John BezisSelfa , Sharon Block (although she was a Princetonian by the time I got to Penn), Alison Games, Liam Riordan, and Wayne Bodle. Two of my former colleagues at the University of Dayton, Bill Trollinger and Amy Morgenstern, went above and beyond the call offriendship in very trying times and are always a source ofgood humor and intellectual companionship. My colleagues at Colorado State University are all dedicated teachers, top-notch scholars, and, fortunately for me, my friends as well. They all have my gratitude, especially Ruth Alexander, Mark Fiege, Judy Gaughan, Elizabeth Jones, Ginger Guardiola, Janet Ore, Alison Smith, and Greg Smoak. Ruth deserves special credit for enforcing the deadlines that at long last squeezed the final draft of this book out of me. My friends in Oxford, Ohio, my home for four years, deserve special mention. I didn't realize how lucky I was to live there until I moved away. Drew Cayton, Amy DePaul, Katherine Gillespie, Rodrigo Lazo, and Judith Zinsser welcomed a non-Miami University scholar into their ranks and provided great intellectual companionship (and Rodrigo was also a great companion for running in the Batchelor Woods trails). Down the road at the University of Cincinnati, Geoffrey Plank was a great friend and colleague in early American history. The Dutton, Quantz, and Tomarken families were the best neighbors ever, and Annette Tomarken did me the favor 260 Acknowledgments of providing me with excellent translations of some of my French sources. R.I.P. Daniel, Flower, Cheeba, Marbles, Caboose, and Sam. A few close friends and colleagues deserve recognition and thanks, as I truly cannot imagine myselfhappy or successful in this profession without them. Sharon Block has been a terrific source ofintellectual and social companionship since we started graduate school, and talking to her always lifts my spirits and encourages me to continue my work as a women's historian. When I first met Kirsten Fischer, it felt as though we had already been friends for years, and I always feel inspired to become a better historian after talking to her. Over the years, she has read and commented generously on most of the chapters of this book. John Wood Sweet has been a faithful friend and sounding board, and a font of new ideas and information. I will always feel lucky that Amy Froide and I overlapped both in Oxford and at the Newberry Library and that Judith Zinsser became not just a colleague in women's history and a neighbor but a friend and counselor as well. My life in Colorado would be unimaginable without the friendship and support of Erin Jordan, who has favored me with countless fascinating discussions of women's history and emergency backup babysitting. And a new friend, Dana Rabin, has loaned me enough energy and encouragement to start a new project and finish this book at the same time. Gail Macleitch, R. Todd Romero, and Heather Kopelson have generously shared their fresh dissertation research with me and have been good companions at several conferences. Emerson Baker has set me straight too many times to count in the details oflife on the Maine frontier. And Geoffrey Plank provided guidance on the Canadian history in Chapters 4 and 5. Additionally, a number of women in the historical profession have supported the research and writing ofthis book. Kathleen Brown, Elaine Crane, Susan Juster, Carol Karlsen, Mary Beth Norton, Nancy Shoemaker, and Marilyn Westerkamp all gave me encouragement at critical times in my career , and although I'm sure they never knew how important it was to me, I would like to thank them here. As series editor at the University ofPennsylvania Press, Kathy Brown deserves extra thanks for her thorough and insightful criticisms...

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