Roxana Cheney Foster - An Uncommon Caring

We've seen how the westward journey changed over the decades from that of the first pioneers who braved the new west.  In other respects, however, overland travel in the 1850s and 1860s presented women with many of the same problems they had had from the start.

Roxana Cheney Foster was born in New Hampshire.  She was a "spinster" (an old term that happily we don't need to label women with anymore) of 26, who had followed an older brother to Illinois where she worked as a schoolteacher, earning $1.00 a week with an arrangement to board in the homes of the communities' school children.  Roxana married after a year and gave birth to her first child in 1848.

With talk of gold buzzing around the town in 1849, Roxana's husband went off to find their fortune in California, leaving Roaxana and her newborn son alone for two years.  Her husband returned to Illinois and then in 1852, her father-in-law went to California and sent letters back to Roxana and her husband to "Sell the farm, buy cows, horses and come to this valley. Don't stay in that inhospitable climate.  I would rather eat off a tin plate and live in California than have the best house and farm in Illinois." 

Roxana wrote in her journal:  "In April (1853) we had a daughter born .  Three months later we sold our farm and bought our outfit for California.  We traveled as far as Council Bluffs with two teams, one with luggage, the other with husband and myself, our boy aged 5, and our daughter Lucy 3 months."

Roxana was 36 years old, older than most women on the road.  She tells only that they traveled through Utah by a "nice stream" and one morning in July when there were other wagons nearby, "we set up a tent and before noon a boy baby was born to us, probably the first baby born in Ogden.  We rested 3 days and then went slowly on."

Such care as Roxana's husband gave her was uncommon. Most wagons didn't "rest" for 3 days, allowing the mother and baby to rest after childbirth.

 By the time she reached California, the baby was 8 weeks old and her daughter was a little over a year.  "The Indians were peaceable all along the route." was the final entry in Roxana's overland journal.