Caroline Agnes Boa Henderson, MHC Class of 1901, and the Dust Bowl

By Linda J. Keown, ‘71

Caroline Agnes Boa graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1901.  She was one of 104 seniors in her class. Caroline came to South Hadley via trolley from Holyoke after arriving there by train from her family farm in Iowa.  In 1907, Caroline moved to the panhandle of Oklahoma, known as ‘No Man’s Land’ and claimed 160 acres of land as allotted in the land grant of Oklahoma’s Homestead Act of 1909.  She was a teacher and married a local farm hand who dug her well and claimed ‘it was the best well I’ve ever dug and I am going to keep it and the school teacher, too.’ Caroline and Will Henderson’s struggles during the dust bowl of the 1930 are chronicled in her book LETTERS FROM THE DUST BOWL published in 2001 and edited by Alvin O. Turner.  My first discovery of Caroline and her life was reading THE WORST HARD TIME by Timothy Egan, published in 2006, and finding a mention of Caroline Henderson, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College on page 154 of the book. 

Egan’s book tells the story of the survivors of the Dust Bowl in vivid detail and was chosen by the class of 1971 as a discussion topic for our 55th reunion.  Knowing nothing about Caroline, I began researching her life and found Mount Holyoke held an extensive archives collection of letters, articles and photographs of her life at Mount Holyoke and beyond.  After spending a day in the archives in Dwight Hall, I shared her story with my classmates at our reunion with the PowerPoint included here (below).