For release March 27, 2002
For more information: Jeff Mammenga, 773-6000

PIERRE -- March is Women’s History Month. In honor of the month, the South Dakota State Historical Society has been recognizing the contributions of women in South Dakota history, using information taken from "Dakota Images" profiles in South Dakota History, the society’s quarterly journal.

Earlier featured women were pioneering politicians Mary Pyle and Gladys Pyle, American Indian activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin and Dr. Abbie Ann Jarvis of Faulkton, the first licensed woman physician and the first licensed woman pharmacist in South Dakota.

The final woman being recognized by the State Historical Society for her contributions to state history is author and historian Edith Ammons Kohl.

Kohl was born in Illinois in 1884. Her mother died when Kohl and her sister, Ida Mary, were young. The girls alternately lived with their father or his sister until moving west in 1907, when they homesteaded at McClure, north of Presho. Ida Mary took a teaching position and Edith ran the McClure Press, one of a string of newspapers specializing in publishing homesteaders’ final-proof notices.

When the Lower Brule Indian Reservation opened to white settlers in 1908, the Ammons moved to an area east of McClure known as "The Strip." There they opened the Ammons Post Office and General Store, and Edith started her own newspaper, the Reservation Wand.

Fire destroyed the sisters’ enterprises in 1909. Later that year, Ida Mary wed a local rancher. She died in childbirth in 1910. Edith then moved to Wyoming and worked as a locator, guiding homeseekers to claims. She married Aaron Wesley Kohl, an architect and inventor. They moved to Denver. He died in 1926.

From the early 1930s to the mid 1950s, Kohl worked as a freelance writer and feature writer for the Denver Post. She was known for promoting western agricultural development and was a prominent leader of the cooperative movement in Colorado.

While living in Denver, Kohl kept up her interest in the Presho area and often contributed items for publication in the Lyman County Herald.

Kohl’s best-known book is Land of the Burnt Thigh, an account of her and Ida Mary’s early homesteading experiences published in 1938. She also wrote A Christmas on the Frontier and Denver’s First Christmas (both 1945) and Denver’s Historic Mansions (1957).

Kohl died at the age of 75 in Denver on July 19, 1959.

The Society is looking for objects, documents, photographs, manuscripts and any other material or information on other significant women in the state. If you have any material or information on famous women in South Dakota history, contact the State Historical Society, 900 Governors Drive, Pierre, SD 57501, or call (605) 773-3458. Headquartered in the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre, the society is a division of the state Department of Education and Cultural Affairs. 

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