Her father died in 1888; her mother then moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, becoming a school principal with progressive ideas regarding education.

She learned "that the art of the common people might be as 'good' for humanity as recognized masterpieces, and that the critic could spur democratic reform.

In contrast to many critics of the time, such as Van Wyck Brooks, who believed that the United States lacked its own coherent cultural arts tradition – which he noted in his influential essay "On Creating a Usable Past" – Rourke set out to search for that "usable past" and show that the country indeed had its own unique tradition.

Through it our early fantasies and mythologies are coming back to us, showing the secure beginnings of a native poetry and a native language; and the flow of these patterns into literary expression can be traced from Hawthorne and Melville to Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson.

At her death, The New York Times stated, "To her, too, the songs and sayings, the ballads, the boasts, and the brashness of farmer, lumberjack, or wandering worker were something worthy of preservation.

[citation needed] However, Rourke continues to have some notable fans who make significant claims for her work and importance.

As it is she wrote solid if unexciting books on Davy Crockett, John James Audubon, Charles Sheeler, the Beecher family, and Lotta Crabtree, "Fairy Star of the Gold Rush".

Peering into the taverns and opera houses and faro parlors of the Jacksonian era she came to the conclusion that the primal scene occurred in humor.

"Each in a fashion of his own had broken bonds ... As figures they embodied a deep-lying mood of disseverance, carrying the popular fancy further and further from any fixed or traditional heritage."