Helen Cody Wetmore

Helen Cody Wetmore was an American writer remembered chiefly for Last of the Great Scouts: The Life Story of Col. William F. Cody, a biography of her brother, Buffalo Bill Cody. Because she wrote from inside the family circle, her work has a personal, firsthand quality that helps it stand out from many other accounts of the American West.

Sources consulted during this search also describe her as someone with a wider public life of her own. She traveled for a time with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, worked as business manager for the Duluth Press, and was active in the women's suffrage movement. Those details suggest a life shaped not just by frontier legend, but by publishing, performance, and public advocacy.

Wetmore died in 1911. Today she is still read mainly for the window she gives into Buffalo Bill's world, but her story is also a reminder that women around famous historical figures often had substantial careers and convictions of their own.