Westward from a 14 Year Old's View

One of the earliest records of the overland crossing is that of Martha Ann Morrison in 1814 as a girl of 13.  She recalled in later years her journey as a young girl:

"At 13 and 14 we were considered young ladies.  The men had a great deal of anxiety and all the care
of their families, but still the mothers had the families directly in their hands and were with them all the time, especially during sickness.

Some of the women I saw on the road went through a great deal of suffering and trial.  I remember distinctly one girl in particular about my own age that died and was buried on the road.  Her mother had a great deal of trouble and suffering.  It strikes me as I think of it now that mothers on the road had to undergo more trial and suffering than anyone else."

Next time...The Division of Labor on the Trail

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Today in Pioneer History:  On this day, July 22, 1793,  Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing north of Mexico, more than a decade before Lewis and Clark,

Parenting on the Wagon Trail

Women traveling with children on the Overland Trail discovered parenting was anything but easy.  Children fell out of wagons, got lost in the midst of many families and herds of animals, and suffered the usual childhood illnesses - measles, fever, toothaches, dysentery. Add to that days of heavy rains or hot sun and any child gets irritable and difficult.  Older children enjoyed freedom not experienced under normal circumstances. The constant fear of Indians kidnapping a child made a mother's job nothing short of heroic.

If a woman was expecting a child during the journey, labor could happen anytime - in Indian territory, in the mountains,  or in the drenching rain.  A woman might be alone with a simple birth or it might be complicated, but all births in the back of a rolling covered wagon would be difficult to us.  Birth was no reason to delay the western journey or to "stop the wagon train."  This was man's time to "better themselves in life" (a stage in a 19th century man's life) and no child was worth giving up free land for.

Certainly not seen as a life stage journey to a woman, one out of five women were in one stage of pregnancy or another in the wagon trail.  Virtually all married women traveled with small children.  Women's diaries on the subject of leaving homes with young children  were almost always full of anguish. 

The good old days, right?

Next time - the difference in men and women's journal and the enemies of the road.

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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On May 8, 1846,General Zachary Taylor defeats a superior Mexican force in the Battle of Palo Alto north of the Rio Grande River even before the United States declared war on Mexico.