The Strange Journey of Rebecca Ketcham

Rebecca Ketcham, single woman headed west in the 1850s with a party of mostly men, found the trip required more than just physical stamina.  Reassuring herself that "if one is prepared with a good stock of patience and cheerfulness" any difficulty could be overcome.  She was tough!  as she wrote in her journal:

"In jumping off the horse alone today, I caught my dress in the horn of the saddle and tore almost half of the skirt off.  That I must mend tonight.  I have had no dress on since the day we came to Westport  but my palm leaf muslin delaine.  I mean to stick to it as long as I can.  It is very dirty and has been torn nearly if not quite twenty times.  I don't care."

Rebecca recorded the carelessness for her well-being by both men and women of the wagon party during a rainstorm:

"When the rainstorm came on, instead of taking me in the wagon, Mr. Gray let me have his rubber overcoat.  It covered my shoulders and arms.  My feet and almost the whole my lap were uncovered.  Mr. Gray told me I would get all wet and muddy and laughed at me when I came into the camp.  My feet and limbs cold as ice, and my face and head like fire."

Why Rebecca was excluded from the other women in the party is unknown.  Was she not of their class?  She was well-educated and the prominent Schuyler family financed her trip.  Another question - why had she traveled alone by carriage from New York to Missouri as stated in the first post about her journey?  If she had left a troublesome situation the women would certainly have been sympathetic...

From her journal she certainly expected better treatment, yet some entries show a feeling of desperation:

"Was very faint and sick at my stomach.  Oh how I thought of Cynthia and her dear mother.  If they had been with me I don't believe I would have sat there all this time without a word of care or sympathy.  Oh the loneliness I feel."

At times her journal tells the vivid accounts of her surroundings and details of her journey, but the attitude of the women  depressed her..."So many times I feel wronged, so illy treated that I hardly know how to restrain my feeling and the effort I make to say nothing depresses my spirits very much."


Rebecca seems to have traveled with an unhappy group of travelers.  By August, some of her resolve seems to have worn away.  "I begin to have some misgivings and fear I shall be in a strange land without one friend." 

Rebecca reached Oregon in spite of it all and became the school teacher as she intended.  Within two years she married Finnis E Mills, a member of the board of trustees for the First Presbyterian Society of Clatsop County, and a gentlemen.  They had 2 sons and in 1855 she and her family returned to her husband's home in Kentucky.  From there  Rebecca is heard of no more, but her journal is a testament to a plain spoken woman who went west alone...and survived. 

Next time...Celinda Hines Story

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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty in New York's Harbor. It arrived in the city on June 17, 1886, and over the next several months was reassembled while electricians worked to wire the torch to light up at night.