The wagon trains to California greatly decreased in 1851 as reports of deadly cholera on the trail the year before and strikeouts in gold prospecting became known. Those who did go west about 2,160 men and 1,440 women tended toward Oregon's rich Willamette Valley because of a new federal land law that awarded a husband and wife a full section.
Volume 3 of Covered Wagon Women contains the diaries and letters of six Oregon-bound women, as well as the journal of an English Mormon woman who described her experience all the way from Liverpool to Salt Lake City. The words of these pioneer...
The wagon trains to California greatly decreased in 1851 as reports of deadly cholera on the trail the year before and strikeouts in gold prospecting ...
We traveled this forenoon over the roughest and most desolate piece of ground that was ever made, wrote Amelia Knight during her 1853 wagon train journey to Oregon. Some of the parties who traveled with Knight were propelled by religious motives. Hannah King, an Englishwoman and Mormon convert, was headed for Salt Lake City. Her cultured, introspective diary touches on the feelings of sensitive people bound together in a stressful undertaking. Celinda Hines and Rachel Taylor were Methodists seeking their new Canaan in Oregon.Also Oregon-bound in 1853 were Sarah (Sally) Perkins, whose...
We traveled this forenoon over the roughest and most desolate piece of ground that was ever made, wrote Amelia Knight during her 1853 wagon train jour...
Some of the women traveling west in the late 1850s were strong advocates of equal rights for their sex. On the trail, Julia Archibald Holmes and Hannah Keziah Clapp sensibly wore the freedom costume called bloomers. In 1858 Holmes joined the Pikes Peak gold rush and was the first woman of record to climb the famousmountain.Educator Hannah Clapp traveled to California with a revolver by her side, speaking her mind in a letter included in this volume, which is also enriched by the trail diaries of seven other women. Among them were Sarah Sutton, who died in 1854, just before reaching Oregon s...
Some of the women traveling west in the late 1850s were strong advocates of equal rights for their sex. On the trail, Julia Archibald Holmes and Hanna...
In their simplicity is their poignancy. On August 7, 1865, Mary Louisa Black noted in her journal that they were nooning on a nice stream in a valey in the mountains. A day later she observed that one of the men in the overland expedition had buried an infant here yesterday still born. One can only imagine her emotional turmoil she had buried her own daughter three months earlier, just as she and her husband set out for Oregon.While each diarist and letter-writer had her personal joys and sorrows, collectively these invaluable accounts demonstrate the passion and courage of these...
In their simplicity is their poignancy. On August 7, 1865, Mary Louisa Black noted in her journal that they were nooning on a nice stream in a valey i...
Forty years after the legendary overland travels of Oregon pioneers in the 1840s, Lucy Clark Allen wrote, the excitement continues. Economic hard times in Minnesota sent Allen and her husband to Montana in hopes of evading the droughts, grasshoppers, and failed crops that had plagued their farm. Allen and her compatriots, in this volume of Covered Wagon Women, experience a much different journey than their predecessors. Many settlements now await those bound for the West, with amenities such as hotels and restaurants, as well as grain suppliers to provide feed for the horses and mules...
Forty years after the legendary overland travels of Oregon pioneers in the 1840s, Lucy Clark Allen wrote, the excitement continues. Economic hard time...
The stories seem simple they left, they traveled, they settled yet the restless westering impulse of Americans created one of the most enduring figures in our frontier pantheon: thehardy pioneer persevering against all odds. Undeterred by storms, ruthless bandits, towering mountains, and raging epidemics, the women in these volumes suggest why the pioneer represented the highest ideals and aspirations of a young nation. In this concluding volume of the Covered Wagon Women series, we see the final animal-powered overland migrations that were even then yielding to railroad travel and, in a few...
The stories seem simple they left, they traveled, they settled yet the restless westering impulse of Americans created one of the most enduring figure...
The diaries and letters of women who braved the overland trails during the great nineteenth-century westward migration are treasured documents in the study of the American West. These eight firsthand accounts are among the best ever written. They were selected for the power with which they portray the hardship, adventure, and boundless love for friends and family that characterized the overland experience. Some were written with the skilled pens of educated women. Others bear the marks of crude cabin learning, with archaic and imaginative spelling and a simplicity of expression. All convey...
The diaries and letters of women who braved the overland trails during the great nineteenth-century westward migration are treasured documents in the ...
The diaries and letters of women on the overland trails in the mid- to late nineteenth century are treasured documents. These eleven selections drawn from the multivolume "Covered Wagon Women" series present the best first-person trail accounts penned by women in their teens who traveled west between 1846 and 1898. Ranging in age from eleven to nineteen, unmarried and without children of their own, these diarists had experiences different from those of older women who carried heavier responsibilities with them on the trail.
These letters and diaries reflect both the unique perspective of...
The diaries and letters of women on the overland trails in the mid- to late nineteenth century are treasured documents. These eleven selections drawn ...
