The Story of Sarah Sim

This is the story of the frontier and how even in the best of circumstances it took a toll on women...

No frontier was harder on women than the Plains.  None found it more stressful than Sarah Sims.  In 1856 Sarah and her husband, Francis,  came from New England to buy 160 acres of land in Nebraska.  Their land had a creek, a grove of trees and neighbors nearby. Sarah was 32 years old when she came west with two children.  Their home was a 10x10 foot cabin.  The family had three cows, two oxen, a horse, a couple of pigs, and some chickens.  The family hunted prairie chickens and rabbits, and gathered wild strawberries and plums.  It seemed they had it better than most.

Sarah wrote her parents that "there is no church, no school.  There is some preaching in private houses. The weather is dry, the water is hard and it seems the wind would blow our little house away."

Before the first year had passed, Sarah's second children died of whooping cough and dysentery.  Her hand got badly infected and a finger had to be amputated.  Francis became ill.  The first winter was bitterly cold. 

Again, Sarah wrote her mother, "it almost breaks our spirits down.  Pray for me that I may overcome my present fear."  For eight months she suffered, becoming despondent and destroying household items, harming herself and sometimes her children, finally attempting suicide.  Francis had recovered and finally tied her to the bed.  Sarah gradually improved and wrote home that, "I sometimes quite despair I would do anything to feel better."

The second year the winter was mild and Francis built an addition onto the house.  They planted potatoes, beans, corn, and salted 1500 pounds of pork to sell.  Sarah planted flowers from seed she had brought from home.  Settlers arrived and a school was built.  Sarah was cheerful.

Sarah stayed strong through four of her nine children dying from diphtheria and mumps.  She survived to live out her life with her family on the Plains of Nebraska - just another of the courageous women who settled the West.  (the photo is Beatrice, not Sarah, but representative of these brave women pioneers)

Next time...A Bit of Learning
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On September 17, 1787, The Constitution of the United States of America is signed by 38 of 41 delegates present at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Supporters of the document waged a hard-won battle to win ratification by the necessary nine out of 13 U.S. states.

No Shrinking Violets!

The women on the frontier took up the causes of the Victorian age like temperance and feminism with actual success.  Females were in short supply on the frontier, so when a man sought a wife he had to agree to such things as abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, bad language and gambling.  There was a popular ditty among pioneer women:
    
The man who drinks the red, red wine,
Will never be a beau of mine.
The man who is a whiskey sop,
Will never hear my corset pop!

The temperance movement grew on the frontier in the 1870s and 1880s as the female population grew.  The temperance crusade had its roots on the western frontier as Kansas' Carry Nation became world renown for her hatchet wielding visits to the salons on the Plains.

Women's rights were recognized on the frontier - women could own and control their own property and engage in trade without their husband's consent.  Wyoming lead the way in women's right starting in 1869, and was the first state to grant women the right to vote fifty years before it was added to the US Constitution.  When it was finally adopted in 1920, all but four of the western states had already allowed women's suffrage, while only two of the eastern states had recognized the right of women to vote.

Next time.  The Story of Sarah Sim
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On September 13, 1814,  Francis Scott Key pens a poem which is later set to music and in 1931 becomes America’s national anthem.   The poem, originally titled “The Defence of Fort McHenry,” was written after Key witnessed the fort being bombarded by the British during the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the sight of a lone U.S. flag still flying over Fort McHenry at daybreak, as reflected in the now-famous words of the “Star-Spangled Banner”: “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there."

Women on the Frontier

In the past, women had been seen as secondary - self sacrificing helpmates to the real settlers of the western frontier.  However, women of the frontier were much more than mothers, housekeepers and healers.  They arrived many times after the men had staked out the homestead, and then women created the real home - organizing and civilizing necessities such as churches, schools and libraries that made the frontier into communities.

The work required to make life possible on the frontier was hard, frustrating, and agonizing.  Most of these women came from eastern homes and many were from "well-bred" homes with clean, tidy houses that spoke of morality in their communities.  How could they keep a sod house clean when dirt fell from the ceiling? The floor was dirt as well and sweeping created more dust and dirt.  Water was not available from the tap and fuel had to gathered.  Cooking was many times done by cow dung and who gathered the cow dung?  Women!  A problem as simple as how to gather cow poop to use was a woman's problem.

Along with these cleaning and cooking eye-openers for these women from society was the problem of loneliness on the frontier.  Distances between neighbors was too far and too spread out to enable frequent visits.  There were no church socials, no quilting bees, no barn raising get-togethers to bring families together.  The men might get to town sometimes to buy and sell, but women stayed a home tending to chores.  There were no breaks from child care, no nights out to get away from it all.  Not surprisingly, mental illness on the Plains was much higher among women. 

Next time - No Shrinking Violets
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On September 10, 1881, tensions neared the breaking point between the Earp brothers and the Clanton-McLaury families, the two major power centers in Tombstone. Two days earlier, a stagecoach had been robbed and the Tombstone sheriff formed a posse that included Morgan and Wyatt Earp to find the culprits. The situation would not be resolved without violence. The Earp brothers and two families were headed for a showdown at the O.K. Corral in October.

Cora Wilson Agatz and Barsima French - Among the Last Pioneers on Overland Trail

Despite the uncertainty and danger of travel, despite Indian wars that were now real threats, pioneers continued to press through tothe West.  At the end of the Civil War, 25,000 pioneers made the overland crossing, among the last Americans to make that journey by wagon train.

Cora Wilson Agatz and her family were prosperous Iowan farm people.  With them went a five span of matched mules, a team of horses, a saddle pony, and four wagons to carry beds and tables, linen, silver, china, carpets, books and pictures.   They took canned goods, bacon, hams, bologna sausage, flour, barrels of both white and brown sugar, and great cakes of maple sugar.

They had a sheet iron camp stove and an oven.  They had a wagon just to hold their clothing.  Also a "maiden lady devoid of hearing and eyelashes who begged passage for the avowed purpose of finding a lifemate out west (which she did soon after arriving) went went the Agatzs.

Cora described the "gymnasium costumes worn by some women" in her journal.  "Short gray wool shorts, full bloomer pants of wool, fastened at the knee, high laced boots, and white stockings which were changed often enough to be kept spotless.  Large straw hats finished off these picture-perfect and sensible costumes.  When compared with the long, slovenly solid calico gowns worn by the other women of the train, these simple costumes elicited many commendatory remarks."  Cora was quite
the fashion reporter...her journal is filled with details of what women wore.

In 1867 Barsina French traveling through Apache country, reminds readers that mothers had to take turn standing guard against Indians at night.  In the morning, a woman cooked "red mud" for coffee, little worrying about clean stocking or fancy clothes.

Migration dwindled after 1888.  The railroad began to replace the wagon and settlers began to look to the lands of the Rockies rather than the coast.  It was a time of consolidation and for a different kind of pioneering - not log cabins but foundations of social life -schools, churches and the renewing of families separated and broken by the overland trail.

To read more of these women's journals in their entirety -
Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel, 1882, 1992 by Schocken Books

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Today in Pioneer History:   On June 3, 1890, Idaho, the last of the 50 states to be explored by whites, is admitted to the union. Exploration of the North American continent mostly proceeded inward from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and northward from Spanish Mexico. Therefore, the rugged territory that would become Idaho long remained untouched by Spanish, French, British, and American trappers and explorers. Even as late as 1805, Idaho Indians like the Shoshone had never encountered a white man.

The Porters - A Lesson in Manual Labor

Lavina Porter, wife of almost 20 and married for five years, was traveling with her husband toward

Pike's Peak and the hunt for gold in the 1860s.  Lavina had been raised as a southern belle and Mr. Porter was totally unfamiliar with manual labor.

"I've learned how to make a delicate cake or a fancy pudding but never before had I tried to cook a meal."

The trail was an education for both Mr. and Mrs. Porter.  Lavina sewed maternity gowns from a blue gingham cover off her feather bed, and another from a flowered dressing gown that her husband considered "too effiminate".

"We passed hundred of new made graves in this part of our route.  One day we overtook a belated team on its way to one of the distant forts with only a man and his wife.  The wife was quite ill in the little tent, having giving birth only one day.  The father put it in a rude box and laid it in a tiny grave by the wayside.  The poor mother was grieving her heart out at leaving it behind in the lonely plain with only a rude stone to mark its resting place."

The Porters brought no medicine with them so when dysentery struck them, Lavina wrote that she told her husband to "take me out and make my bed in the sand and let me die in peace."  Advised by another traveler to give her a big dose of castor oil, her husband, not having castor oil, administered hair tonic instead...and it worked!

"I would state here that the Sioux Indians were the finest looking warriors we had seen.  The braves were mostly naked and with one wearing a discarded hoop skirt.!"

Youth and a life of pampering did not prepare either Lavina or her husband for the pioneer life they sought but they survived - their child was born in California.

Next time...changes in the Overland Trail
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Today in Pioneer History:  On April 13, 1866, Butch Cassidy, the last of the great western train-robbers, is born on this day in Beaver, Utah Territory.

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..

Catherine Bell - A Representative Woman on the Trail

Catherine and her husband had married in South Norwalk, CT before they migrated  to Iowa and then joined the overland journey to California.  Catherine was carrying her first child, born in August on the shores of the Humboldt River.  Considering her advanced condition, her journal is uplifting:

"It is very muddy and you had better believe it...I had to get out and squat around in the mud to cook out of doors.  But I soon got used to it and it was only fun for me."  (FUN? Seriously?!)

Catherine and her husband traveled with 17 wagons, 59 men, 8 women and 20 children.  They
traveled with no threat of Indian interference, as she noted.

"I didn't feel afraid of them.  I could lay down in the wagon nights and sleep as well as I could in a house."

From California she wrote, "On the bed lies my little back headed boy nestling about trying to make me put away my writing and take him up.  Charles and myself are both very healthy.  I am as fat as a bear." 

Women who were expecting a child were not put aside as their Victorian successors would be, pampered and thought to "delicate" to participate in most of daily chores.  That's for sure! Another sign of how hardly our ancestors really were.

Next time - Music on the Trail

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On this Day in Pioneer History: On April 6, 1832, the Sauk warrior Black Hawk is drawn into war with the United States,  determined to resist the growing presence of Anglo settlers on traditional tribal lands.

Harriet Sherril Ward - Culture on the Westward Trail

A fifty year old woman of education and wealth, Harriet Ward, traveled west with her husband, her son, Willie who was 11 or 12, and her 17 year old daughter Francis.  The journey, to her educated taste, was full of artists' scenic views.  She described Independence Rock by writing, "Cold chills came over me and tears would flow in spite of all my efforts to suppress them."

Harriet's journal is written on blue vellum paper.  She wrote of extravagances such as when her husband "brought me beautiful flowers.  The form and color resembles the snowball and the perfume the night blooming Jassamine." 

Her daughter Frankie played guitar along the journey.  Another family friend and guitarist, Amelia White, joined their party with her sister Sarah.  Harriet records the evening with evident upper class values:  "Frankie and Amelia amused us with the 'Mansion of Happiness' and it was indeed pleasant to see Frankie again in the enjoyment of young ladies' society whose tastes and feelings are in union with her own." 

Next time - Fashion of the Trail

Note: Amazon has a book on Harriet, Prairie Schooner Lady

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Today in Pioneer History:  December 3, 1818, Illinois achieves full statehood. Though Illinois presented unique challenges to immigrants unaccustomed to the soil and vegetation of the area, it grew to become a bustling and densely populated state.

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.

Ir's All in a Day's (and Night's) Work

The domestic work  that women on the westward migration did included some highly unfeminine chores.  Certainly not anything close to Victorian standards, the rhythm of a woman's work  began before dawn with the lighting of the fires, putting the kettles of water on and milking the cows.  By the time the coffee was boiled, the beans warmed and the bread baked, the men were rising to gather in the herds.

Helen Carpenter was a bride on her honeymoon...

:"Although there is not much to cook, the difficulty and inconvenience in doing it amounts to a great
deal - so by the time one has squatted around the fire and cooked bread and bacon, and made several dozen trips to and from the wagon, washed the dishes and gotten things ready for an early breakfast, some of the others already have their night caps on to go to bed.  In respect to women's work, the days are all very much the same - except when we stop and then there is washing to be done and light bread to make and all kinds of odd jobs.  Some women have very little help about the camp, being obliged to get the wood and water, make the camp fires, unpack at night and pack up in the morning...if they are Missourians they have the milking to do if they are fortunate to have cows.  I am lucky in having a Yankee for a husband so I am well waited on..."

Cooking, of course was not new to women, but cooking in the open was.  Lodisa Frizzell said that it "goes agin the grane."  Two forked sticks were driven into the ground, a pole laid across and a heavy kettle swung upon it.  Pots fell into the fire and families soon became accustomed to food that was burned.  There were no tables, and all preparation was done on the ground.  As Lodisa said, "All our work  here requires stooping.  Not having tables, chairs or anything it is very hard on the back."

Esther Hanna, 18 years old and a minister's wife wrote in her diary of winds that were "very high and piercing..had to haul our water and wood for the night.  I have also had to bake tonight.  It is very trying on the patience to cook and bake on a little green wood fire with the smoke blowing in your eyes so as to blind you, and shivering with cold so as to make your teeth chatter."

Cooking in the rain was difficult with the weeds and buffalo chips wet and not able to burn.  "There is nothing to eat but crackers and raw bacon" one woman wrote.  In heavy rain, women might dig a hole in the ground, jam in a hollow ramrod to serve as an air shaft, and then fill the hole with small rocks to bake bread on those.  The food had a pungent smell of ashes or sagebrush or buffalo chips and smoke.  During one rainstorm, James Clyman told of one women who "having kneeded her dough, she watched and nursed the fire and held an umbrella over the fire and her skillet for nearly 2 hours while the bread baked."  Now that is determination!

More on Cooking on the Trail next time...
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On September 17, 1868, early in the morning  a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux stage a surprise attack on Major George A. Forsyth and a volunteer force of 50 frontiersmen in Colorado.

Reflections of a Pioneer Woman in Later Life

Nancy Hembree Snow Bogart...

In remembering the days of her journey on the Overland Trail, Nancy "Matilda" Bogart described family  life on the frontier:

"I've often been asked if we did not suffer with fear in those days but I've said no, we did not have
sense enough to realize our danger, we   others, I often wonder how they really made it through it all and retained their reason.

Crossing the Deschutes River, the women took their places in the boats, feeling they were facing death.  the frail craft would get caught in a whirlpool and the water dashing over and drenching them through and through.  The men would then plunge in the cold stream and draw the half drowned women and children ashore, build fires and partly dry them and the bedding and then start on again.  The women preferring to try it on foot, but that was no pleasure trip, carrying a small child in arms whilst another one or two clung to her skirts whilst they climbed over fallen trees and rocks.

There were both deaths and births on the way.  The dead were laid away in packing boxes but could not be covered so deep but prowling savage would exhume them to get the clothes they were buried in, then leave the body for hungry wolfe  that left bones to be gathered up and reintered by the next group that passed along.  All these things sorely taxes their powers of endurance."

Next time:  10 years after the first families went west, did it get easier? 

Today in Pioneer History:  On September 1, 1836,  Narcissa Whitman arrives in Walla Walla, Washington, becoming one of the first Anglo women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains.

Miriam Thompson Tuller's Story

Born in Illinois, Miriam married Arthur Thompson at the age of 15 and joined the migration to the west with her husband the following spring.  In Miriam's own words:  "My husband is fired with patriotism and myself am possessed with a spirit of adventure and a desire to see what is new and strange."

With no children, strong and eager, the Thompsons brought youth and optimism to the westward journey.  The couple set out on May 11, 1845, as part of an 840 wagon train.

"We were unable to make much headway with so large a train of wagons.  The company divided and then divided again until we had 20 wagons sometimes and sometimes only 4 or 5 wagons.  We were indifferent to fear.  The buffalo were solid masses as far as the eye could reach and we had fresh meat galore."

At Fort Hall, Miriam's group met a  man who told them that Indians would kill them before they reached the West.  The group was of stout heart and weren't afraid and as Miriam said,

"The Indians proved better than represented.  They were there during a sandstorm with their canoes and were more than willing to take us over for some calico shirts.  The wagons were unloaded and taken apart and after many loads, we were safely out."

Missionaries along the road sold beef and potatoes and the travelers felt confident of their travels.
Soon the mountains became treacherous and the men decided to send the women and children ahead on horseback and mules.

"I was mounted on an Indian pony...left husband and camp - everything but a few clothes and a little provision to try to reacch some place before the rains set in."

The little party of women and guides climbed Mount Hood: "The coming down was worse than the going up.  The zigzag trail a foot or more deep with sand.  It rained hard all night.  We had no tent or shelter.  The 4th night we met 3 men from Oregon City who came with provisions to rescue."

The final entry in Miriam's diary is quite different from the optimistic way she began her journal.  "In
the fall of 1848 when gold was discovered my husband went, but never returned.  He was murdered by Indians.  There were 4 in the camp and none were left to tell the tale.  July 1850, was   married to Jeremiah G. Tuller."
(pic at right is the actual campsite of Thompson...minus the car.)

And that was the end of Miriam's journal keeping.  With a husband, children and a labor intensive life in the new west, she probably had little time for recording her "mundane" life of a pioneer. 

Next time...Reflections of a Pioneer Woman in Later Life

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Today in Pioneer History:  On August 18, 1853,  Cyrus Skinner, who would later be hanged by the Montana vigilantes, ends his first stay in the  at San Quentin.Skinner was typical of the thieves and killers who terrorized the gold fields of Montana in the early 1860s.

The Sager Family Saga

Catherine Sager's father was a restless man who had emigrated from Ohio in 1838 to Missouri.  In 1844 it was time to move again to Oregon.

Catherine remembers:

"not having accustomed to riding in a covered wagon, the motion made us all sick and the
uncomfortableness of the situation was increased from the fact that it had set into rain, which made it impossible to roll back the cover and let the fresh air in.  It caused a damp and musty smell that was very nauseating.  It took several weeks of travel to overcome this "seasickness".

Water ran through the tent, the bedclothes were saturated with water.  Soon we came to a place in the road which had quite a embankment on one side, and notwithstanding Father's best efforts to prevent it, the team ran on to this and overturned the wagon, nearly killing mother.  A tent was set up and Mother carried to it where for a long time she lay insensible.  The wagon was righted up, the things loaded in and Mother having recovered we drove on."


Catherine shares this terrible scene on the trail:

"On the first day of August we halted to noon in a beautiful grove on the banks of the Platte River.  The children had become so accustomed to getting in and out of the wagon as to lose all fear, and would get out on to the tongue and keep clear of the wheel without putting Father to the trouble of stopping the team.  On the afternoon of this day in performing this feat, the hem of my dress caught on an axle handle precipitating me under the wheels both of which passed over me badly crushing my left leg before Father could stop the oxen. 

Seeing me clear of the wheels, he picked me up and carried me in his arms and ran to stop the team which had become unmanageable from fright.  A glance at my limb dangling in the air as he ran revealed to him the extent of the injury I had received and in a broken voice he exclaimed, 'my dear child, your leg is broken to pieces!'

The Sager's journey was full of trouble and tragedy as we continue on next time...

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 Today in Pioneer History:  On August 6, 1874, law officers kill Jim Reed, the first husband of the famous bandit queen Belle Starr.

The Nancy Welch Story

In 1843, Nancy and James Welch along with their 3 year old son, went west from Iowa.  In the winter Nancy's 2nd son was born while they wintered in Independence, Missouri.  They started out again in the spring, following only notices posted on trees by previous travelers.  The season was rainy with the rain drenching the wagon tops, and the roads were muddy.  When they reached the Deschutes River in Oregon, they loaded everything they had onto rafts and let the Indians guide them across.  It was a cold, wet December.

When James and Nancy arrived in Oregon, they bought 300 acres of land.  They built the first wooden house and a lumber mill.  In 1849, James Welch went off after gold, leaving Nancy alone with the eventual 11 children to stave off the Indians.

Nancy's journals illustrate that child-bearing did not delay or deter travel west.  19th century men did not excuse women from daily responsibilities to prepare for children.  There was no maternity leave, few if any baby doctors and women were on their own in childbirth. 

I have shared these two women's stories because it amazed me that most settlers started out west with no maps, no plans of how to get there - and without even a compass to guide them!  By the Grace of God they arrived for the most part unharmed to build a new life in the unknown wilderness.  That would be comparable to us going to Antarctica or even Outer Space without  a compass or any idea of how to get there!  Simply amazing...

Next time...The Journey from a 13 year old's Eyes

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Today in Pioneer History:  On July 10, 1889, hotel owner, "Buckskin" Frank Leslie murders his lover, the Tombstone prostitute Blonde Mollie Williams in a drunken rage. 

I Promise to Work Myself to Death

Family dimensions, emotional balances, and work roles along with daily life stress on the Overland Trail in the 1800s can be found in women's journals.  From journals kept during westward migration, it is clear that women were the shapers of the family and the key to the internal dynamics of these pioneer families.

Even though marriages were the acceptable norm, male marriage structure was considerably less constrictive.  Men could go west leaving their family behind without a blink of the eye.  Women were left to care for the children alone.  Women, however, seldom traveled west outside the family.

Marriage was entered into with the recognition that farming and the working of a frontier farm required a large family to succeed.  Men were the heads of the household, yet women were commonly called on to perform men's work.

Women on the trail were not whiners or complainers, but accepted their role in starting this new life out west.  Their domestic daily chores included preparing meals, washing clothes, caring for the children, driving the oxen, collecting buffalo chips, collecting berries, rolling dough on a wagon seat, and baking pies over hot rocks to add variety to the mundane meals of beans and coffee.

I don't know about you but I am already exhausted! Time for a nap...Next time - Parenting on the Trail.

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Today in Pioneer History: On May 3, 1874, John B. Jones begins his adventurous career as a lawman with an appointment as a major in the Texas Rangers.

Hospitality the Native American Way

There was a basic ignorance of American Indian customs...standard hospitality demanded a token gift from strangers traveling through their territory such as flour, sugar, coffee, meat, tobacco - but it apparently took the settlers a long time to begin to question WHY a race so once self sufficient would need to ask for food or to even attempt to understand Indian hospitality.


Frontier women were credited with respect, courtesy, friendliness and a willingness to share food as a guarantee of safe passage for their families.

Beaded bags, and hand-crafted shawls were popular items of exchange with the women who admired the fine handi-work and the high standards of behavior expected from Indian children. 

As women's view of themselves grew, they attitudes were more humane in exchange with the Indian, and they began to see them as people just like themselves.  As one woman wrote when Indians had served as scouts and guides with their wagon train "want to prove that there was honor among their tribes after all."

Next time...Different Tribes for Different Strokes...

The Suffrage Question

Two of the frontier badges that women wore were Education and Suffrage.

The question of suffrage in Oregon came to vote 6 times after 1859 but despite all the energy and time devoted to the issue, suffrage did not pass until 1911.  After 1867, 17 referendum on suffrage were held in 11 states and of those 11 states only 2 won victories. In Washington the suffrage bill was defeated twice in 1854 and again in 1869.  Men gave the right to vote to teenagers instead of to the women that wanted it and were knowledgeable as to how to use it. 

When freedom finally came to the frontier woman, it had not changed the thinking of men enough to grant full political rights.  But the frontier woman did organize for religion and charitable causes, joined temperance organizations far more readily than they did  for the suffrage cause.

Suffrage leaders were well-educated, prosperous, Protestant, and married.  They argued that woman should vote because their moral perspective and domestic responsibilities helped them understand the problems of the increasingly complex world.

next time..the conclusion of Frontier Women

Gold Rush Fever

Starting in 1849 a disease called "gold rush fever" began to rule the West.  California was the first and most spectacular of the mining frontier.  From 1849 in California, to 1858 in British Columbia, to the Pacific Northwest in the 1860s, and the Black Hills of Dakota in the 1870s...miners followed the smell of gold.
gold.  Women's Periodicals of the time condemned this "gold fever" because it "unhinged men, making them free as a bird as they flew from many a cheerful fireside, and many a happy home".

Because women were so few in these mining camps, their appearance was quite noteworthy.  In Nevada in 1853, the arrival of a group of women caused quite a sensation..."The men stood and gazed at us with mouth and eyes wide open every time we went out" wrote one of the women.

Not all women who were part of the mining camps were of the "less than respectable variety".  Many went for the same reason men went, some accompanied their husbands and some, well, they followed the miners from camp to camp for the men's pleasure.

So how did women shape the mining frontier? Or did the mining frontier shape them?

Next time...

Church Bells Ring

Frontier women soon instituted Sunday school, recruited students, taught those classes, and even attended regional conferences to report their progress.  Prayer meeting were held each week.  Women held fund raisers, and raised financial aid to support their churches, giving the women a sense of power in their new frontier communities.  One St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Oregon City begged their womens' society to help bail them out of year-end bankruptcy. Women who chose to come west as missionaries (they numbered over 2000) were missionaries first and wives second.

Congregations were predominantly female with only one out of every four men a member of any church.  Churches on the frontier were quite different than those back east.  Back home there was bells, large buildings, fancy clothes, and permanent preachers.  On the frontier, churches were often simple clapboard buildings, schoolhouses, even a home parlor.  There were no bells in early churches, no fancy clothes, and no permanent ministers.

For women church was a symbol of society, something they missed greatly.  The church symbolized community progress and an opportunity to gather together. Church sponsored parties and dances  were enjoyed in a civilized frontier community.

Of course, not everyone agreed with dancing,  One woman wrote "They got a bit huffy about it, but we did not care a fig for them." Another said that if a preacher could preach a sermon they would not dance, but they must have a dance or a sermon.  The minister supposedly took his hat and left.

Next time...Women Societies

Morrill Act of 1862

The Morrill Act of 1862 provided federal lands to initiate a system of public higher education.  Since there were few secondary schools in existence on the frontier, there were  not enough qualified students of either sex to apply.  Only two colleges in Kansas were for women.

By the 1890s schools in Kansas, Oregon and South Dakota had curriculum for females, but not for entering a career - for entering marriage.   These were called "domestic economy" departments and were the forerunners of Home Education degrees that our grandmothers might have gotten at a state college.  These female students, as late as 1900, received courses in etiquette, conversation, and needlework.   While men took 3 year science courses, women took music, painting, drawing and modern language.

The future of a woman at that time was usually a teaching job or marriage.  1/4 as many women as men received post secondary education of any kind - and none of those schools offered a college degree.

We've come along way baby!

Next time...Women of Faith Call for Change