March 2020 | SMITHSONIAN 61A critic praised
this novel for in-
troducing a new
kind of heroine:
“Wholesome, sen-
sible, and beauti-
ful, Elnora is also
compassionable,
self-reliant, and
intelligent.”Curt Burnette,
a naturalist at
Limberlost State
Historic Site, at
Rainbow Bottom,
one of the areas
Stratton-Porter
liked to photo-
graph and write
about.
ship of each bird of every description that made its
home on his land.” She embraced the guardianship
with joyful purpose, becoming the protector of 60
nests. A blood-red tanager nesting in a willow. Pe-
wees in a nest under the pigpen roof. Green warblers
in sweetbriar bushes. Bluebirds, sparrows and rob-
ins. Hummingbirds, wrens and orioles.
Making her rounds, Geneva learned patience and
empathy: approaching nests slowly; imitating bird
calls; searching bushes for bugs; bearing gifts of ber-
ries, grains and worms. She earned the confi dence
of brooding mothers enough to touch them. She re-
membered how “warblers, phoebes, sparrows, and
fi nches swarmed all over me, perching indiscrim-
inately on my head, shoulders, and hands, while I
stood beside their nests, feeding their young.”
Shortly before her mother died of complications
from typhoid, the family moved to the town of Wa-
bash, where at age 11, Geneva—fussing about having
to wear proper dresses and shoes—began attending
school. Adjusting to life without her mother and her
farm was diffi cult. Geneva insisted on transport-
ing her feathered charges—nine in total, injured or
abandoned—to school in cages.
When Geneva was 21, Charles Dorwin Porter—a
businessman known as one of the most eligible
bachelors in the Decatur area—spotted the live-
ly, gray-eyed brunette at a social event on Sylvan
Lake. He was 13 years her senior, and his fi rst letter
of courtship, in September 1884, arrived as formal
as a starched shirt: “Having been rather favourablyimpressed with your appearance, I venture the for-
wardness to address you.”
Charles and Gene, as he aff ectionately called Ge-
neva , exchanged long and increasingly warm hand-
written letters. Several months and kisses later, she
was “Genie Baby.” In a letter to Charles composed a
year after they met, she informed him of her position
on a subject of growing interest to him.You have ‘concluded that I favour matrimony.’
Well, so I do, for the men. I regard the pure
and lovable wife as the best safeguard for a
man’s honour and purity; the comfortable
and happy home as his rightful and natural
resting place; and every loving environment
that springs from such a tie one step nearer the
heart of earth’s dearest and best. That’s for the
man. And for every such home some woman is
the sacrifi cial fl ame that feeds the altar. I take
notice that my girl friends who have been en-
gaged a year and those who have been married
a year look vastly diff erent, and it sets me to
pondering on the diff erences between a man’s
engaged love and his married love.In April 1886, wearing a silk gown with a pink taf-
feta brocade of rosebuds and soft green leaves, an os-
trich plume in her hat, she was married in Wabash.
She had let go of her doubts about marriage, but re-
tained her pluck and her own pursuits. When most
women were homemakers, Stratton-Porter created a
double-barreled life, in name and in career, with the
support of her husband.
In 1888, they moved with their only child, Jean-
nette, from Decatur to a nearby town that coinciden-
tally shared her name, Geneva. During the oil boom
of the 1890s, the town grew to boast seven taverns
and seven brothels. As a young mother in this small
town, Stratton-Porter enjoyed domestic life. She
painted china. She embroidered. She designed their
new home, the Limberlost cabin. She tended plants
in her conservatory and garden.
She also carried a gun and wore khaki breeches
into the snake-fi lled Limberlost swamps less than a
mile away from her home in search of wildfl owers,
moths, butterfl ies and birds. She voted on the board
of directors at Charles’ Bank of Geneva.
One night, Stratton-Porter also helped rescue
downtown Geneva. It was 1895 and Charles was
away on business. Hearing screams, Stratton-Por-
ter pulled a skirt over her nightgown and, long hair
fl ying, ran into the melee of onlookers. Flames en-
gulfed Line Street. There was no local fi re brigade,BYLINESKathryn Aalto is a historian and the author of the
forthcoming book Writing Wild.
Husband-and-wife photography duo Ackerman +
Gruber are based in Minneapolis.