By the time the mother and daughter returned home there was no celebration. Accused of abandoning her family and blamed for the death of two children, Helga Estby's trip was a cause of shame for those close to her. Despite Estby's grandchildren growing up in the same home, she never shared her story knowing the anger her family harbored over it. After Estby's death her papers were burned by her daughters.
Luckily for history, a daughter-in-law discovered a scrapbook containing two newspaper clippings of Helga and Clara's journey. Granddaughter Thelma Portch also helped keep Helga Estby's story alive with oral history sharing it with her daughter Dorothy Bahr. Bahr encouraged her 8th-grade son to write about his Great-great-grandmother in a paper read by Linda Lawrence Hunt. After exhaustive research on a history that had been so repressed, Hunt published Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America. This work, full of newspaper clips, family oral histories, and photographs is the foundation for this site.
What they could not have predicted was that they would be denied their reward of $10,000 and ostracized by friends and family for their incredible trek. Newspapers and American citizens celebrated the Estbys as representation of the "New Woman" and what she was capable of. Along with a diary and letters, Helga Estby kept hundreds of pages of detailed accounts of her journey with the intention of publishing a book when she returned to Washington.
The Story of Helga Estby
and
her
Walk
across
America
December 23, 1896 two women walked into the
New York World Newspaper at New York City Hall Park.
Helga Estby and her seventeen-year-old daughter Clara, braved all elements of weather, harassment by vagrants, and threats by wildlife over the course of seven months.
Despite previous health issues and injuries along the way, they successfully walked the 3,500 miles across the United States, all for "the pleasure and some money".