Mae Reed Porter (1889–1969)

Mae Reed, from Des Moines, Iowa, met her future husband Clyde Porter at Iowa State College, and they married in 1910. After Clyde's service in the U.S. Army during World War I, the couple moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where Clyde rose to become an executive for the Kansas City Power & Light Company. Mae was an historian of the American West and an art collector. She was especially interested in early exploration, development, and the fur trade of the Far West, particularly of the Rocky Mountain area. She achieved national recognition when the book she co-wrote with Bernard DeVoto, Across the Wide Missouri, won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1948. After Clyde retired from his job, he began assisting Mae with her historical research. Together they wrote the biographies Ruxton of the Rockies (1950), and an annotated version of George Ruxton's 1851 book Life in the Far West (1950); and edited Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail (1960).