Women’s Diaries Give a Glimpse Into History

When the late Christa McAuliffe was a student at Framingham State College in Massachusetts, she took a course based on the diaries of pioneer women. Later she said it was those diaries that inspired her to submit to NASA the idea of keeping her own diary as the first teacher in space.

She had, perhaps, read the words of women like Rachel Fisher, a devout 25-year-old Quaker living in Salem, Iowa, when in the spring of 1847 she and her husband, John, and their little girl, Angelina, became part of America’s westward migration.

They set out for Oregon in a wagon train, leaving behind their families, their meeting house and the graves of three children who had died before they were 3 years old.

But the road to a new life was not to be much easier, as her letters home revealed.

“John still continued sick . . . I had to bid him farewell and see him breathe the last breath of Earthly Life without A struggle or groan . . . the place where we left him was nine miles from whare we had come to platt river close to the road side by a small grove. I thought of returning but I had none to take me back and I did not see how I could do better than to go on.”

In another letter, we learn that Angelina died a month later and was buried somewhere in what is now Idaho.

Three days after her daughter’s death, the man driving Rachel’s wagon drowned in the Snake River. Rachel fell sick for six weeks.

A Happier Turn

Yet Rachel Fisher managed to get herself and her cattle safely to Oregon, and she decided to stay on in what is now Washington County. It was there that she married William Mills, a 22-year-old farmer, and her life began to take a happier turn.

The letters of Rachel Fisher and those of other women pioneers are gathered in a series of books called “Covered Wagon Women,” published by the Arthur H. Clark Co. in Glendale. They are part of a projected 12-volume series based on obscure or little-known diaries and letters written by the housewives and mothers who became part of America’s history as they journeyed westward in the 19th Century. So far, five volumes have been issued. The company plans to issue about two volumes each year.

Volume I documents the great overland trails from 1845-1849. Volume II concentrates on diaries and letters from 1850. Volume III includes diaries from 1851; Volume IV covers 1852, the California Trail. Volume V includes 1852, the Oregon Trail.

The Clark Co., owned by Robert Clark and named for its founder, his late grandfather, has been publishing nonfiction Western Americana since 1902. In Glendale since 1930, the company is the country’s oldest small specialty publisher. Its primary markets are collectors and historical institutions. (The books are available by mail order at $25 each by writing the Arthur H. Clark Co., P.O. Box 230, Glendale, Calif. 91209.)

“We’re simply trying to get the documents out there as documentary evidence for the public to use as they will. We’ve presented no reminiscences after the fact. We haven’t tried to analyze the material,” Robert Clark said as he sat in his book-lined office filled with old photographs and Western memorabilia. “We’re just trying to get it out there as source material. We’re still trying to dig up the stuff.”

Personal Accounts Only

All of the letters and diaries are personal accounts, and none of the letter writers or diarists had expected to see their writings in print. Thus, their writings with their authentic detail reveal an intimacy and immediacy.

The editor of the volumes is Kenneth L. Holmes, a professor of history emeritus at Western Oregon State College who searched out the documents in historical societies, including the Oregon Historical Society as well as the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, the Huntington Library in San Marino, the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University and the Western Oregon State College library.

Holmes has also found a number of other never-published documents in private family collections as he brings to light the long neglected story of the American woman pioneer and her contribution to U. S. history.

“I think women in general have been neglected in American history and so have ordinary people,” Holmes said in a telephone interview. “I’m not writing interpretive books. I’m presenting primary sources. I don’t get rich doing this, but I love it. I have a contract for a book every six months and, at age 71, I measure my life in volumes rather than in years.”

Holmes was born in Montreal. His parents were both English, and his father was a clergyman. His early years were spent in Pasadena but he left in the 10th grade after his family moved to San Pedro, where he graduated from San Pedro High School. He graduated from the University of Redlands with a B.A. in 1938 and later received a master’s degree from the Berkeley Baptist Divinity School. After a career in the Baptist ministry, he became a Quaker and a college professor in Oregon. He received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Oregon in 1962.

Holmes presents the letters and diaries as much as possible in the original, and as he states in the introduction: “The manner of writing, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, or the lack of it, is an important statement by the author.”

Demanding Routines

The daily routine of the journey west was demanding. In a letter to her brothers and sisters from the banks of the Missouri River, Phoebe Stanton wrote: “My opportunity for writing is poor as I have to write on a small box in the wagon with every kind of noise around me . . . forgive my scribbling for I have written the most of it with the oxen hitched to the wagon.”

As the migration continued into the 1850s, cholera was epidemic and scurvy a dread affliction, as there were few fruits and vegetables available on the trail. Lucena Parsons wrote that cholera hit her wagon train repeatedly and often without warning.

On July 9, 1850, she wrote: “They buried a boy of Lovells. He fell from the wagon & broke his leg and died soon after.” Only three days later, she noted: “a little boy of Captain Maughs, 3 years of age fell from the wagon. The 2 wheels run over his stomach and he died in about an hour.”

Despite all the hardships, the women’s pioneering spirit endured. Lucena Parsons wrote on July 17, 1850: “Still we are journeying on & in good spirits. We have some fine times with all our troubles.”

The women’s attitudes toward the Indians varied, as did their encounters with them.

Sara Davis wrote in September, 1850, that her wagon train was traveling through a field of “perfect wheete” when they came to a river and found a dead white man with “four arrows shot in his breast.” The man’s heart had been cut out and “next to him lay a dead Indian, shot once under the arm.”

The diaries of the 1850s also begin to allude to the disintegration of the Indian tribes, as seen in Lucena Parsons’ entry of Aug. 1. “We paast a camp of Indians to day that have the small pox. They have it very bad . . . many of Them have died. We saw one squaw dead under a blanket with her papoose wailing around her sick.”

Despite the hazards of the westward migration, more and more people were lured by the promise of a new start.

Thousands Made Journey

Mary M. Colby wrote in a letter from St. Joseph to her brother and sister in May, 1850: “I could not begin to tell you how many their in St. Joseph that are going to Oregon and California, but thousands of them it is a sight to se the tents and wagons on the banks of the river . . . They are as thick as camp meeting tents their is 30 or 40 families in the mess that we intend to get in with.”

The going was easier for some than for others.

Anna Maria Morries traveled west in 1850 as the 36-year-old wife of the commanding officer of the third infantry division of the United States Army, Major Governor Morris. She had a maid named Louisa, and so she did no cooking or washing and never had to gather buffalo chips for the fire. The trip seemed to agree with her, as she noted on June 8, 1850: “The Adjunct sent me a loaf of bread today & it was quite a treat. The woman who cooks for him came over with her yeast and made me up a loaf for tomorrow. She says I look so much better than when we left Leaven-worth that I ought to stay on the prairie all the time.”

Amused by Indians

On June 17, her party crossed the Arkansas River and while waiting for the wagons to cross, she wrote: “We were perfectly beset with Indians and amused ourselves with them. One of the young squaws took a great fancy to my diamond ring & generously offered me a brass bracelet in exchange which i declined.”

Even the stern Mormons engaged in some fun. Sophia Lois Goodridge’s wagon train had two violins in her group. She wrote on Sept. 19, 1850: “Camped at the foot of Independence Rock. This evening we had a dance on the banks of the Sweetwater. The whole company participated, we had a good time.”

Goodridge had a good singing voice and later became one of the first members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, as well as the second of her Mormon husband’s four wives, and she bore him 9 of his 14 children.

Margaret Frink and her husband, Ledyard, were among the thousands of people, mostly men, who were heading for the California Gold Rush. On Aug. 20, 1850, Margaret wrote in her journal: “There are but few women among these thousands of men, we have not seen more than ten or twelve.” Two days later, as her party prepared to cross the Nevada desert, she wrote: “Many people are passing to day begging for food . . . Among the crowds on foot a negro woman came tramping along through the heat and dust, carrying a cast-iron bake oven on her head, with her provisions and blanket piled on top--all she possessed in the world--bravely pushing for California.”