Elia W. Peattie

When Gilbert Hitchcock bought the Daily Herald and combined it into the Omaha World-Herald Peattie became chief editorial writer for the paper.

A supporter of orphanages, charity hospitals, and the need for shelters she also took a hard line and was outspoken in her opposition of capital punishment, lynching, and the Wounded Knee Massacre.

In 1888 she was commissioned by Chicago publishers to write a young people's history of the United States, and wrote the seven-hundred page The Story of America in four months.

Later in 1889 the Northern Pacific Railroad employed her to visit and report on Alaska: A Trip through Wonderland became a popular guide-book.

Some time after 1890, Peattie befriended fellow writer Kate McPhelim Cleary while both were living in Nebraska.