With intelligence and growing passion, Alice Bower of Vermillion and Joseph Gossage of Rapid City corresponded with each other during their 16-month-long courtship. Though they did not meet in person until late 1881, 29-year-old Gossage, publisher of a small newspaper, had been introduced to 20-year-old Bower, an experienced typesetter, several years earlier by a mutual acquaintance who had encouraged him to hire her to set type for his new Black Hills Weekly Journal. Their letters and Bower’s journal offer a window, not only on their hearts, but also on that particular time and place on the Dakota frontier. Bower and Gossage’s correspondence reminds us of a time when the newspaper office was the dynamic center of community life. Modern-day readers will enjoy fascinating glimpses not only into the settling of eastern and western Dakota Territory, fraught with floods and economic cycles of boom and bust, but also into a middle-class Victorian courtship - in which exchanging letters and photographs was an indication of serious interest and discussing temperance and the intention not to become parents reflected the earnest spirit of the times.
