Customer Reviews

Covered Wagon Women, Volume 1: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1849

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The writer left the letters and diaries as the women wrote them which I feel makes this book exceptional. So much is written about the men who helped pioneer in the west, this book gives the womens side. It is facinating to look into the everyday life of these woman and imagine how they were able to overcome such trials. You wonder how they were able to leave husbands and children, who had died, to have to bury them out alone in the wilderness. This book gives the reader a look into these brave women and the hardships they endured. It is like a trip back in time. This is the first time I have read a book of this type and this one made me anxious to read the rest, which I have allready started.

I got this book yesterday in the mail and it is already read. This book takes letters, diaries and other correspondence of women who shaped the frontier and gives the reader an insight into the hardships that their families faced making the long western crossing to the hope of a better future in Oregon and California.
The author has tapped many sources in libraries all across the west to get this information together. He makes a point in the introduction that this is information compiled nowhere else. He deals with lesser known narratives except he does include a journal from Virginia Reed a child travelling with the Donner Party and Tabitha Brown one of the top 10 figures in shaping Oregon history.
Very informative and educational! Can't wait to start the next book in the series.

The study of women's history has blossomed during the past several decades, and the result has been the production of several outstanding works on the subject. "Covered Wagon Women" is an important contribution to this growing field of investigation. It is a useful work that makes available to historian and buff alike several fascinating letters and diaries written by women involved in the westward movement of the 1840s. The editor, Kenneth L. Holmes and the publisher have undertaken an ambitious project, and, this work, and others in this series, represent a benchmark in this field's historiography.

The material presented in this first volume has been arranged by the editor into twelve chapters with entries by fourteen women. These accounts are representative rather than exhaustive. However, there are important documents discussing the experiences of several intelligent and articulate women on the Oregon, California, Santa Fe, and Mormon trails. The editor chose his documents well. They are all primary resources, written at the time of the incidents described or immediately thereafter. More important, Holmes did not reprint commonly used diaries. I was pleasantly surprised that Susan Magoffin's diary of her trip to Santa Fe in 1846 was not included in the collection. It is an outstanding diary but readily available elsewhere. Instead, Holmes scoured the nation's archives and libraries, and solicited copies of documents from individuals, to assemble what should be considered an exemplary collection of manuscripts.

Holmes's editorial work is also outstanding. He allows the individual writers to tell their own story without correcting grammar, punctuation, and syntax. He adds, moreover, useful annotations providing additional background information about key personalities and events without overediting, certainly no easy task judging from the number of edited works that suffer from this defect.

The editor gives considerable attention to Mormon women during the westward trek to Utah. Holmes includes as a major piece within the collection a diary of Patty Bartlett Sessions, dated June 21, 1847, through September 26, 1847. The original, located in the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been well used by scholars investigating the Mormon trek to Utah, the role of women in the Church and in western history, and the development of medical treatment, but its publication for a wider audience is most welcome.

While "Covered Wagon Women" is a fine book of lasting historical value, it could have been made better with additional work. For instance, the editor chose to omit both a bibliography and an index, opting for the issuance of a cumulative bibliography and index in the tenth volume of the series. This decision will, of course, make the volume less usable by researchers in the interim. Additionally, Holmes is inconsistent in his editorial work. He is at his best in his treatment of the diary of Patty Sessions. First, it has an excellent introduction that draws heavily upon the research of such leaders in the study of Mormon women on the frontier as Leonard J. Arrington and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher. Second, it includes a useful dramatis personae, briefly describing characters mentioned in the diary. Finally, Holmes attaches a solid bibliography pointing the direction for further study. In contrast, Holmes's editing of other diaries and letters possesses nothing approaching the depth of scholarship he demonstrates in his work on Sessions. Most other entries contain only a cursory introduction, and none has either a description of characters or bibliography. It would have been commendable had Holmes been able to bring to the other accounts in this volume the fine editorial work he displays in his work on the Sessions diary.

In spite of these shortcomings, Kenneth Holmes has compiled a well-balanced, enjoyable book that should be of interest to all readers concerned with the study of women, the frontier movement, the overland trail, and Mormonism. This type of documentary history, although until recent years considered somewhat esoteric, should be encouraged, for it can open entirely new avenues of investigation when handled by skilled historians.

After reading Lillian Schlissel's excellent book "Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey" I was stricken by the 'curiosity bug' and NEEDED to read more. I turned therefore to Mr. Holmes, a recognized name in this field.

His series, "Covered Wagon Women", currently consists of 11 volumes, although this review is just about the first book. Volume One consists of entries from the very first period of westward migration: 1840 to 1849. The authors are women who write of their experiences in a way that reflects both their ages and educational levels -- and it is fascinating.

For example, from Keturah Belknap we discover how families prepared for the 8 month trip. She tells of difficult goodbye's to family and friends; how she spun wool so that she could have a friend weave it 'just-so' to make good solid wagon covers; and even how she and her husband packed their wagons. And from many of the journals we find out how absolutely difficult it was to cross the mountains. How in snow and rain they had to ratchet the wagons up by hoists and chains to get over huge boulders, and then lower them down the steep declines with breaks on the rear wheels. There are also the sad records left by the Donner party participants, and those that witnessed the drownings and accidents along the way.

To his merit, Mr. Holmes has left these records pretty much alone. He has not changed the writers creative spelling nor punctuation, except to provide [spaces] where the sentences are run on and the meaning consequently obscured.

In addition to the original writings, Mr. Holmes provides background information for each diarist, and footnotes throughout. While I found the footnotes interesting and informative, the introductory material dealt almost exclusively with with genealogy (rather than historical backdrop) and so was not of much assistance to me in trying to understand the emigrant's experience.

Here are the Chapter headings:

Editor's Introduction
Across the Plains in 1845, by Betsy Bayley
A Letter from the Luckiamute Valley, by Anna Maria King
A Brimfield Heroine, by Tabitha Brown
The Donner Party letters [note: by Tamsen Donner and Virginia Reed]
Two letters of Phoebe Stanton
Letters from a Quaker Woman: Rachel Fisher
The Diary of Elizabeth Dixon Smith
A Pioneer Mormon Diary: Patty Sessions
The Commentaries of Keturah Belknap
The Diary of a Pioneer Girl, by Sallie Hester
A Letter from California, by Louisiana Strentzel
Running a Boarding House in the Mines

Four Stars [B-]. The diaries and letters published here are valuable historical records that thankfully have not been tampered with: the reader gets the full flavor of the writers. There is one map showing the routes, but almost no pictures of the women involved. And annoyingly there is NO Bibliography in this volume, with sole exception of the one provided for the one Mormon entry. Sources are listed throughout.

If you are a newbie (like myself) interested in this timeframe and in written records of women, I would suggest you read up on the period first, or concurrently, before beginning this series. Personally, I would not have gotten as much enjoyment out of this book if I had not read Lillian Schlissel's book first.

Lillian Schlissel's book "Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey": Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey

I have read all 11 books in this series over and over, and I would recomend them all. It is like looking over the shoulder of the rugged pioneer women as they took time, almost every day, to document what would probably be the most important event in their lives. Tired,wet, and sometimes hungry, they brought stability to the west. I have also traveled and seen many sights that still remain as evidence of the Oregon Trail. We can't travel back in time, but this is the next best thing!

Authentic, bold and openhearted accounts from 1840's emigrant women. Historians and the general reader should be so fortunate that these noble women took the time out of their busy, hectic days to write letters and diaries of their westward travels. Secondly, we should also be grateful that these narratives have survived for us future readers to somewhat comprehend their stamina, perserverence and gutsy character.
Heartfelt accounts of river fordings, lack of food and/or water for livestock and people, Indian misconducts, wagon breakdowns, disease and death of loved ones, vivid landscape and countryside descriptions and the numerous day to day occurences for survival. To mention a few of the dozen writings:
Betsey Bayley and Anna Marie King's accounts of the perilous 1845 Stephen Meek Cutoff.
Tabitha Brown's 1846 account of emigration along the Applegate Cutoff.
Letters from Tamsen Donner and thirteen year old Virginia Reed's trip with the horrific Donner Party of 1846.
Patty Sessions who drove her own wagon to Salt Lake in 1847 and delivered several babies along the way (midwifed nearly 4,000 deliveries in her lifetime).
Rachel Fisher's travels in 1847 who lost her husband and a child during the emigration.
Elizabeth Dixon Smith's party of 1847 that lost several emigrants during their journey.
Editing by Dr. Holmes is second to none.

This book is a great book. It is in wonderful detail of the mid 1800's and the western trails. I definitely recommend this book, but this book is more for older readers. If you love history and things about the westward trails you will love this book. These letters and diaries are great to read if you love history and geography like me.

This book has been my best friend for the past week! i would carry it everywhere with me just hoping for a free minutes to read a page.
Seriously people today have no idea what these poor pioneers went through, we are absolutely spoilt!
Can you imagine losing 8 children and having only 1 child reach adulthood? what about traveling all the way across the country, only to have your husband die and your all alone in a strange land with no housing,no money and no food and 7 young children all under the age of 13 to look after! Marrying a man, not because you love him, but because he needed you only to cook and clean for him and claim the hundreds of acres only a married man can do? Marrying somebody because you need a provider for your 8 children and he needs a mother for his 10 children?
Not having any of life's simple pleasures for months on end, and no merchants to buy from for hundreds of miles. Watching your animals die, not knowing if you will ever get out of the journey alive.
I believe that everybody should read this book not only to find out what life was like for people back then, but to appreciate what we have today!

I very much enjoyed this book.They say history is written by the winners and the women of the old west were truly winners.They fought hardships we can never imagine and most never lost hope.These are their stories,in their own words,which to me,gives it more meaning.Nothing was really edited and it is marked as such.We can see the hope,dispair,and fulfilment of these women as they braved a new land.They trod beside their husbands and children and thru it all reamined the glue that held them together.I has helped me understand more and learn more about the fierce American woman!

Bought a few of these books for research info. I was able to get what I needed. I couldn't just sit and read this books for enjoyment though.