The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America

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Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. The famously orange-and-black insects also lay their eggs on milkweed plants so that their offspring have a ready food source. It may that later in the 1960s (or into the 1970s), Ellen Amelia Everett sold the Post Office to Charles and Beulah Chattle. She received many offers—a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher.

The Great Ellingham Invasion Committee Record prepared in 1942, lists ‘Miss Wilkin 57″ and “Miss E Wilkin 59” at The Post Office in the village. In 1955, her story ratcheted deep into the American psyche: her life alone on a small farm, her horse, her dog, her fearlessness and determination.But you’ll find in each Monitor news story qualities that can lead to solutions and unite us–qualities such as respect, resilience, hope, and fairness. From the day I sounded out my first board book (Ann Likes Red), read my first poem (Block City, by Robert Louis Stevenson) and was swept up in my first long chapter book, (Little House in the Big Woods) I’ve been a passionate reader and fascinated by the lives and personalities of my favorite authors. At the age of 63, on November 8th 1954, Mesannie Mabel Libby Wilkins left her home in Minot Maine on horseback headed for California.

This poignant, inspiring story is not just about a woman choosing to live instead of die, but also about an America that no longer exists.Weather, though, was a formidable foe acting like a character wreaking havoc, resonating today when extremes of climate can no longer take a back seat. The 1942 Great Ellingham Invasion Committee Record lists Mr and Mrs Everett with three children and ‘Mr Spencer’ at Church Farm in Great Ellingham. Annie Wilkins was an American original, and The Ride of Her Life gives her the tribute she deserves. Clip-clopping” at the pace of three to four miles an hour, they shared newly constructed turnpikes (and backroads) with cars and trucks whizzing by when a “single older woman without family or employment faced few and stark choices.

She met a lot of nice people along the way, and she saw a lot of towns and cities on her journey cross-country.The proceeds of such a sale to be divided between his surviving sons and daughters, with his youngest daughter Annie taking two shares. The only daughter of Annie Wilkins’ late sister Ellen Elizabeth Wilkins, Ellen Amelia was five years old when her mother died in 1907. With William is his 26 year old youngest daughter, Ann Maria, and his 9 year old granddaughter Ellen Amelia Wilkins. In his Will made the 21st July 1919, William appointed his sons Thomas and Walter together with schoolmaster John Alfred Field, as his executors and trustees.