Helen Clark's Music on the Journey

Discovery of silver in Nevada drew more adventurous pioneers along with the beginning of the Pony Express between St. Joseph, Missouri and Placerville, California. 

Helen Clark, who we've met before, kept a journal filled with self-confident and optimistic entries.  She was young and wrote of lively things. 

"A fiddler comes down from the other camp to see if a dance on the turf cannot be started.  Mr. Upton
got down his melodeon and played some - we danced a while before bed."

Three nights the violins provided the music:  "Dora and Mary danced the polka. Mother had a headache and is trying to be real sick but I hear music in another tent."

Life on the trail would have been difficult enough without something to lighten the mood!  The young carried the music to the West with them in their souls, thank goodness!! 

Next time...Learning the meaning of Manual Labor

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On this Day in Pioneer History: "On April 8, 1842, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, a significant chronicler of the West and the wife of George Custer, is born in Monroe, Michigan..