With Their Own Blood: A Saga of Southwestern Pioneers
by Virginia Culin Roberts

On March 16, 1860, a youthful Larcena Pennington was abducted by Apaches who stripped her, beat her, and left her for dead in a ravine in the rugged Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona. With great strength and courage, Larcena crawled back to camp where, two weeks after her kidnapping, amazed companions welcomed her. Thus begins this unique story of life in early Arizona.

When Larcena Pennington left her home in Texas shortly after her mother’s death, she could not have imagined what the untamed wilderness had is store for her. She and her father, Elias Pennington, along with eleven brothers and sisters, set out for California, but Arizona was as far as they got before sickness forced them to stop. They would go no farther west, electing to try a life of farming in a hostile, acrid land.

With Their Own Blood traces the lives of Larcena and her family through every hardship in the newly acquired Gadsden Purchase. Larcena is witness as her loved ones are killed and rampaging Indians steal her family’s livelihood and property. Aside from the terror brought on by constant Indian attack, Larcena and her siblings face frontier lawlessness, disease, poverty, hunger, and isolation. As the litany of hardship continued, some surviving family and friends fled back to Texas. Larcena persevered, however, and became one of the few pioneer women of her generation to live into the relative peace and quiet of the twentieth century.

With Their Own Blood weaves together the strongest kinds of love, hate, envy, and revenge. It also demonstrates how one pioneer woman dealt with these emotions as she coaxed a home and family out of the chaos of the Old West. Using family letters and papers and primary documents from Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, Roberts presents a real-life story of bad guys, hostile Indians, and pioneer spirit. The volume transcends family history and provides a framework for telling the tale of the western frontier in the bloody Civil War and antebellum years.  

VIRGINIA CULIN ROBERTS, descended from two territorial Arizona families, has long had an interest in the experiences of pioneer women. The Pennington saga is one result. She has also published a number of articles in scholarly journals and two books for young readers on southern Arizona history.