No Place for a Lady

 This movable society of settlers going west had guidelines for moving...supplies that should be left behind, like elegant clothing, heavily carved furniture, or a silver service - which were plainly not practicable on the trail going west.  All possessions were to be secure, compact and portable.  Space and weight had to be conserved for food, water, shelter, ammunition and tools.  There were actually guidebooks to explain how to pack your wagon!

One thing commonly left behind in the beginning of the land rush west was women.  The mining camps were notoriously male.  In the spring of 1849 in all of San Francisco, it is said that women numbered only 15.  Every camp had its share of prostitutes, but tough, bearded, weather-beaten men would stand on the street for hours just to have the sight of a real lady or a child.  Often men would travel miles to welcome the first "homemade lady" to camp. And let's face it, mining camps were not the ideal place to raise a family!

The scarcity of women  lowered the morality and made life rougher, but it had some advantages as well.  When women did come later, they brought their morality along with their inequality.  The making of social distinctions was women's work.  "Putting on style" wrote one Montana reporter, "is the detestation of everybody.  It is neither forgiven nor forgotten and kills a man like bullets."  In these movable towns, people seems more equal than men and women do otherwise, not because of a creed, but because of their way of life. 

Women were, however, moving west.  The women who moved in the wagon trains were probably not as interested in "putting on style" as their counterparts back East.  They were interested in survival, in feeding their families and keeping their children safe from the perils of the trail.  These were not your society conscious women - they were rugged and hearty and helped make the frontier what it was - a place for people to find a new life and a new way of living.  

Women became the organizers of schools and churches in the new settlements.  They brought order to the West and a bit of civilization.  Without women, the West would not have been a place for families. Many became honest businesswomen - cooking for the men, sewing clothes and keeping the place "respectable."  Men may not have wanted respectable, but without it the West would have remained just one abandoned town after another.  We will look at that next time.

 

Next time...Ghost towns

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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 13, 1878, Kate Bionda, a restaurant owner in Memphis, Tennessee, because the first to die of yellow fever in the epidemic that spread through America from a steamboat passenger.  Yellow fever, carried by mosquitoes, gets it name from the jaundice that usually accompanies the disease.  The cause was not known in the 19th century and spread to New York, New Orleans and Philadelphia and killed thousands of people over several outbreak years.

Skirting the Land Offices

Federal land office finally opened under the Pre-Exemption Act of September 1841. Under these federal laws a man had to have a house on the land at least 12 feet square.  The house had to have a glass window.  Settlers, however, played games with these federal laws, so to speak by claiming they had a 12x14 house which in reality was actually a 12x14" house or hanging a window sash on the inside of the house to look like a window when there was none.  

Sometimes the same cabin was moved from claim to claim to satisfy the requirements.  In Nebraska there was said to be a house on wheels, drawn by oxen, for that very purpose.  At the cost of $5 a day a settler could hire out the house, thereby swearing that he had a residence of the land he was claiming.  It worked for many a "residence" in the community.

Women were not allowed to claim land unless they were widows who could claim "head of family."  Not to be outdone by the men, women came up with a plan to borrow a family.  A baby or child was hired out to serve as the movable house did.  The women would sign the adoption papers, swear to be head of the family and claim her land.  Afterwards, she would annul the adoption papers, and return the child to the rightful parents.  

From the early days of Western settlement age up until at least the Civil War, "association" (or club) law ruled the West.  It mean proper, quick judgment and procedures.  The do-it-yourself kind of law that for most practical purposes served to settle the West.

Next time...Not Always So Democratic

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Today in Pioneer History:  "On June 29, 1613, London's original Globe Theater was destroyed by fire.  The fire was started by a cannon shot that went off during the performance of Henry VIII.  The Globe was the theater where many of Shakespeare's play were performed.  

Rules are Rules

Membership in these "association clubs" that governed new settlements prior to Federal guidelines, was  usually acquired easily and quickly.  The membership rules varied from length of residency  (2 months) to whether one could see his chimney smoke from the location of the meeting.  The rules adopted by these community clubs however, were simple and easily understood - and religiously enforced.  They provided protection to the members from outsiders and from each other in unlawful actions.  There was no patience with legal technicalities, nor did they tolerate anyone taking advantage  of the law or each other.  The law was enforced promptly and effectively. 

One example from Johnson County Iowa dealt with a claim jumper with a good whipping by the committee.  A more drastic example in 1839 in Iowa City involved another claim jumper (someone who tried to take over someone else's land already claimed).  Mr. Crawford tried to take over the claim of one William Sturgis, the rightful owner.  Crawford refused to surrender the claim as requested several times.  A meeting was called for on November 7 and sixty men marched to Crawford's cabin where he was still inside building.  After another request to leave the claim was refused, and even an offer to pay him for the labor he had done, the men took the four corners of the cabin and in 15 minutes there was not a log left standing.  Mr. Crawford was still standing with ax in hand in the center of the vacant lot.  

The ruling of these association clubs was law since no lawyer, judge or jury could be found that were not members of the ruling association.  Apparently there was no appeal or recourse for a person, as Mr. Crawford discovered when he tried to get his own justice against their actions.

Next time...Land Offices Arrive

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 25, 1876, Native American forces and Sitting Bull defeat the U.S. Army troops of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer near Montana's Little Bighorn River.  Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, leaders of the Sioux tribe of the Great Plains, had resisted the government confining their people to reservations, and even though they killed Custer and most of his men, within five years, they were confined to reservations.  A sad fact of our history as Americans.

Taking the Law into Their Own Hands

The early farmer settlers organized to protect their lands.  There were no courts of law - only "associations" or "unions" which sprang up virtual everywhere settlers formed communities.  For example, in Elkhorn Creek, Wisconsin, 40 families settled in a grove before the land was actually for sale by the Federal government.  A Methodist circuit rider passing through in 1835, noted in his journal, "They had, in the absence of all other law, met and made a law for themselves...appointed commissioners to take care of the land, preserve the timber so as to make it valuable...when it was settled by township law."

These families in Elkhorn Creek had allowed each family 40 acres of woodland  and as much grassland and each one needed.  No man was allowed to monopolize the timber, but that they should sustain each other against any new settler coming in.  At no time should any settler bid on another man's land.  Such a man would be "knocked down and drug out of the land office", tried in court and fined.  No spectator bid on a settler's land and no settler bid on his neighbor's land.  That was "the law."

These associations or unions guaranteed that a settler's land, even if not surveyed yet, remained his land, any improvements made, his profit and any crops grown, his crops.  These groups grew up quickly in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa - wherever settlers "broke the sod."  They began with a mass meeting of all settlers, forming a committee to draft by-laws and elect official leaders.  Each association had a procedure for choosing juries to settle disputes, a president and a marshal.

Each association also handled the land title records, in many ways acting as the Federal government would act.  These unions became the whole government, punishing crimes against person or property.  You could say they were technically "outside the law" but it was through such organizations that law and order was brought to the West.

Next time...Association Membership

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 22, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the G.I. Bill designed to compensate members of the armed forces for their efforts in World War II allowing my father and many of yours to go to college.  The bill was actually called the Servicemen's Readjustment Act and it was hoped to avoid the 20,000 unemployed veterans and their families who protested in Washington in 1932 from happening again.

This Land in My Land

Traveling back in time to a wide open West.  Before the Gold Rush.  A nearly empty continent west of the Allegheny Mountains.  The Great Land Rush of the 19th century in America.  When there was no government rule, just land for the taking.  Or was there?

The western public lands were technically under the control of the Federal government headquartered in the East.  The belief was that you could not deal with land at a distance without an accurate definition of what you were dealing with.  This led to surveying the lands into rectangle townships - each six miles square with 36 sections, each a mile square of 640 acres.  The sale of these large tracts of land to those in the East with money seemed the simplest and most orderly way of settling the West.  Beginning with Ohio in 1803 (the first public land state) the government kept the title to all ungranted land with the exception of that for education.  Nice and orderly...

That's not how it actually happened though...the first settlers, called "squatters" were those that got there first and they didn't wait for any laws or deeds to tell them they owned the land.  They cared less and knew even less what the government said.  To have waited for protection by law would have been to lose all the advantages of being there first.  So they made their own laws.

These settlers came without proper documentation, nor the intention of adhering to any program or surveys.  They stopped here, they stopped there, according to how the land looked, how the wagon was faring, if the oxen were tired.  More times than not they didn't stay put and moved on - not really knowing where their final destination was, but hoping for the best land.  However orderly and neat might the Federal plan be, the settlement of the West was anything but that - nearly all westward movement in America in the 19th century was a land rush.

Next time...building a system of laws.

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 15, 1846, the Oregon Treaty is signed between the US and Great Britain, establishing the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Georgia as the boundary between the United States and British Canada.  The United States gained control of the Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana while the British retained Vancouver Island and navigation rights to part of the Columbia River. 

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.