New Cowtown event celebrates women who had a role in shaping the West

From proprietors to rule breakers to “soiled doves,” the women who played a role in shaping the West — and Wichita — will be celebrated at Saturday’s Women of the West event at Old Cowtown Museum with re-enactors and special performances.

“Part of the Women of the West is to talk about the well-known women but also the lesser-known women,” said Jacky Jacobs Goerzen, the living history museum’s executive director. “Often the women get overlooked in our history. This is all about the women.”

Along with featuring women like well-known suffragette Susan B. Anthony and sharpshooter Calamity Jane, the event will focus on women like Millie Hodge, who ran Wichita’s first boarding house for Black guests; Mary Klentz, who ran a dress shop and millinery; and Victoria Murdock, who ran The Wichita Eagle after her husband, Marshall, who founded the newspaper, died. It was Victoria who coined the paper’s name in 1872 — she won a coin toss with her husband, who had wanted to name it Victor in her honor.

In 1878, when the population of Wichita was about 4,000, 47 businesses were owned and operated by women, Goerzen said.

The original homes of Hodge and the Murdocks are among the more than 50 historic buildings at Cowtown. The Hodge House was one of the first homes in Wichita built and owned by African Americans. Retired drama teacher Sheila Kinnard will perform the role of Hodge, who was commonly referred to as Mother Hodge.

A temperance/suffragette march will take place in the streets of Cowtown at noon, followed by a speech by Anthony. Cowtown’s cowboys and city women re-enactors will have gunfights at 1 and 3:30 p.m.

Other women making appearances will be Margaret Borland, the first woman to run a herd of cattle into Wichita; Julia Munger, the wife of Darius Munger, who built the first house in Wichita; and Catherine McCarty, a laundress who was the only woman to sign the petition to incorporate the city of Wichita and who had some notoriety as the mother of the outlaw Billy the Kid.

There will also be appearances by some of the infamous ladies of the West. Soiled doves was the euphemism for women prostitutes, a profession some women turned to if they became widowed or abandoned after following their husbands to the frontier, Goerzen said.

The Delano Dollies Dance Hall Revue, a dance hall troupe, will perform. Two other volunteer troupes — Piccadilly Players and Dixie Lee Saloon Girls — will recreate characters and acts one might have seen at the Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona.

The characters include a belly dancer who claimed to have danced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, opera singer Carrie Delmar, comedienne Nola Forest and Mademoiselle De Granville, who was billed as the “Female Hercules” and did feats of strength, according to Rachel Parrish, the troupe director of Piccadilly Players who will play the role of comic singer Irene Baker. The Bird Cage Theatre shows, happening at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., are for an 18 and older audience because of “raucous bawdy fun,” according to show posters.

Women of the West is one of the several new events that Cowtown has put on this summer, Goerzen said. Another new events this year, the monthly First Friday Late Nights, also happens this weekend, 6-10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 3.

“It’s a really different look at Cowtown to come out at night,” Goerzen said.

Many visitors enjoy getting photographs in the evening, plus the evening event allows Cowtown to capitalize on its “spooky” reputation as being inhabited by ghosts.

In fact, nationally known ghost hunters the Wraith Chasers will run a public ghost investigation of Cowtown from 6 p.m. to midnight Saturday, following the Women of the West event. Admission is limited; tickets are $93. For ticket information, visit visitwichita.com/event/ghost-hunt-in-a-ghost-town-with-the-tennessee-wraith-chasers/33374/.

Admission for the First Friday Late Nights Sept. 3 is $6 per person. Regular admission applies for the Women of the West event Saturday, Sept. 4. Admission to Cowtown on Sundays is free.

Women of the West at Old Cowtown

Where: Old Cowtown Museum, 1865 Museum Blvd.

When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 4; last admission is at 4 p.m.

Admission: $9 adults, $8 ages 62 and older, $7 ages 12-17, $6 ages 5-11, and free for ages 4 and under, Cowtown members, teachers, and active and retired military and their families

More info: 316-219-1871, facebook.com/events/870966603771571, oldcowtown.org

This story was originally published September 2, 2021 at 4:00 AM.