Age Changes Your Perspective

Katherine Dunlap represent older women traveling west in the 1860s.  She marked the dangers more seriously than the young journalists and seems to have not noticed the new country as much as the new horrors..

"A little girl was jostled out of a wagon, run over and killed."

Katherine traveled with a small child of her own so her thoughts were expressions of her own fears.  She also  notes:  "Two children were killed by a stampede."

On July 16, 1864 she came upon the grave of an infant:

"Oh what a lonely dark and desolate place to bury a sweet infant.  The inscription says 'Morlena Elizabeth Martess.  Died Aug. 9, 1863, born July 7, 1862.  Friends nor physician could save her from the grave.'  The  gravestone carries a plea to all emigrants who might pass to repair the grave, it was repaired and a pen of logs built around it."

During this time, photographs were often taken of deceased children, posed in their deathbeds,  became a cherished possession, placed on mantels or tables in the home.  (I don't know about you but that would just be creepy. and no, even though I found one, I didn't choose to post a picture of a dead child.)

Next time...Making a living as a women in the early west.

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Today in Pioneer History:  On June 1, 1871, John Wesley Hardin, one of the deadliest men in the history of the Old West, arrives in Abilene, Kansas, where he briefly becomes friends with Marshal Wild Bill Hickok.