Do you know the name Carrie Ingalls?  Perhaps she rings a bell from childhood.  If you ever read the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder or if you ever watched "Little House on the Prairie" on TV, you know Carrie.  

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Carrie was the younger sister of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  In Laura's books, Carrie is often portrayed as a delicate child, the little sister whom Laura worried about. 

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But as an adult, Carrie was the maverick of the four Ingalls girls.  An unmarried woman, Carrie had to make her way in the world.  She settled on one of the careers open to women on the frontier:  the press.  

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At various newspapers, Carrie set type, ran the print shop, composed ads, edited copy, opened a newspaper, and took over struggling ones as they approached closure (when the town failed to gel).  Her boss, E.L. Senn, thought highly of her work and continually transferred her to newspapers that needed her touch.

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Carrie boosted her little towns (one of them only had 16 residents), telling readers where a new store was going up or who was sick or when a dance would take place.  Essentially, she helped make small, lonely towns lively and more desirable to settlers.