The Stewart Family Heads West

We last left Annie Stewart and her husband John (the hoarder lol) stuck on the trail with wagons too heavy to keep up with the rest of the family.  After rearranging their wagons, Annie and John kept moving but missed catching up with the rest of the family as expected.  A thousand miles later, they changed their destination and followed the southern route to California.  It was a year before the families even heard of one another again.

The elder Stewarts (Dad and his 2nd wife) also departed from the established route and took a new
road through Idaho Territory.  Along with hundreds of other emigrants they were brought close to starvation in the Cascade Mountains and did not reach Oregon until December.

The trail wore away at the emotional lives of women - it separated mothers, daughters, grandchildren.  It would be 3 years before the father and his wife would know that his daughter and her 11 children had made it to the West.  There were messages from people who had seen them, word that they had stopped at this place or that place, but his decision not to wait on his daughter and her husband had extended the time of anguish and uncertainty for the whole family.

This brings up another point - the subservience to the authority of husbands and fathers that women endured.  If journals are any proof of feelings, it generated a gulf of resentment between husbands and their wives.  Women didn't argue with a man's decision to stay or go - or to wait.  They "obeyed" whatever the man wanted, whatever he said - even if that meant never seeing your children again. Lucky for the Stewarts this was not the case.

One question about this story remains...why didn't the rest of the family share the possessions of Annie and John?  All the brothers and sisters, father, step-mother, friends certainly had room for a couple of pieces that would have lighten the wagon load and allow them to stay with the family.

 Two important patterns of the frontier in this story are the desire to hold a family together along with the desire to respond to the impulses of the road, to take the chance of the moment and move with freedom.  It seems that the father had more of the latter desire than the former.  The women, however, wrote of the agony of leaving family behind.

Next time...Rebecca Ketcham, single woman on the Overland Trail.

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This Day in Pioneer History: On October 20, 1803, On this day in 1803, the U.S. Senate approves a treaty with France providing for the purchase of the territory of Louisiana, which would double the size of the United States.