Covered Wagon Women 5: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1852 : The Oregon Trail (Covered Wagon Women) [Paperback]

Kenneth L. Holmes (Editor), David C. Duniway (Editor), Ruth Barnes Moynihan (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1997

Abigail Jane Scott was seventeen when she left Illinois with her family in the spring of 1852. Her record of the journey west is full of expressive detail: breakfasting in a snowstorm, walking behind the wagons to keep warm, tasting buffalo meat, trying to climb Independence Rock. She meets her future husband, Benjamin Duniway, at the end of the Oregon Trail and, in the years to come, finds fame as a writer and a leader of the suffrage movement in the Northwest. Her grandson, David Duniway, edited her trail diary for Covered Wagon Women.

 

This volume includes the equally vivid diaries of other women who rode the wagons in 1852. Polly Coon of Wisconsin recalls trading with the Indians. Martha Read, starting from Illinois, is particularly alert to the suffering of the animals, noting hundreds of dead cows and horses along the way. Cecilia Adams and Parthenia Blank, twin sisters from Illinois, jointly chronicle their once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kenneth L. Holmes was a professor of history at Western Oregon State College. He edited and compiled Covered Wagon Women, drawing on archives and private sources.

 

Ruth Barnes Moynihan is the author of Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway and the coeditor of So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier (Nebraska 1990) and of the two-volume Second to None: A Documentary History of American Women (Nebraska 1994). She is an adjunct professor of women’s studies at the University of Connecticut.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (June 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803272944
• ISBN-13: 978-0803272941
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,393 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Stirring sunbonnet narratives, November 18, 2003

By 

William J Higgins III (Laramie, Wyoming United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Covered Wagon Women 5: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1852 : The Oregon Trail (Covered Wagon Women) (Paperback)

Once again, these diaries and letters of the "Covered Wagon Women" series detail the extraordinary stamina of early day pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail.
The year 1852 not only had the heaviest trail traffic westward, but it was also rife with hundreds of human cholera deaths. As Parthenia Blank solemnly relates, "it makes it seem very gloomy to us to see so many of the emigrants buried on the plains". At the end of her journey, Martha Read had counted 750 graves, "but I suppose that a small part, for there were so many campt off from the road and buried their dead".
Life on the trail also took its toll on livestock. Martha Read further notes the tally of "600 dead cattle and 50 horses" from "hollow horn"(anthrax), alkali water, poisonous plants, "want of good care", little food, lack of foot care, etc.
Even in the early stages while crossing the Iowa River, Polly Coon is quoted as saying, "What a brittle thread has life and how uncertain that another moment is ours" after witnessing three men drowning during the river fording.
Seventeen year old Abigail Jane Scott's lengthy diary is complete not only of daily routines, observations of the countryside and the many hardships associated with trail life, but also the vivid and harrowing descriptions of the deaths of her mother and brother during the journey. She further says, "If it wasn't for hope, the heart would fail".
Editing by Dr. Kenneth Holmes and David Duniway brilliant. Introduction by Dr. Ruth Moynihan excellent.