Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Elinore Pruitt Stewart, born Elinore Pruitt, was a homesteader in Wyoming and a memoirist. Between 1909 and 1914 she wrote letters to a former employer in Denver describing her life there. They show an adventurous, capable and resourceful woman of lively intelligence, and they were published in two collections, in 1914 and 1915. The first, Letters of a Woman Homesteader, was the basis of the 1979 film Heartland. A Burnt Fork Santa Claus comes from her letters.