I Promise to Work Myself to Death

Family dimensions, emotional balances, and work roles along with daily life stress on the Overland Trail in the 1800s can be found in women's journals.  From journals kept during westward migration, it is clear that women were the shapers of the family and the key to the internal dynamics of these pioneer families.

Even though marriages were the acceptable norm, male marriage structure was considerably less constrictive.  Men could go west leaving their family behind without a blink of the eye.  Women were left to care for the children alone.  Women, however, seldom traveled west outside the family.

Marriage was entered into with the recognition that farming and the working of a frontier farm required a large family to succeed.  Men were the heads of the household, yet women were commonly called on to perform men's work.

Women on the trail were not whiners or complainers, but accepted their role in starting this new life out west.  Their domestic daily chores included preparing meals, washing clothes, caring for the children, driving the oxen, collecting buffalo chips, collecting berries, rolling dough on a wagon seat, and baking pies over hot rocks to add variety to the mundane meals of beans and coffee.

I don't know about you but I am already exhausted! Time for a nap...Next time - Parenting on the Trail.

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Today in Pioneer History: On May 3, 1874, John B. Jones begins his adventurous career as a lawman with an appointment as a major in the Texas Rangers.