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Ham, Eggs, and Corn Cake: A Nebraska Territory Diary

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The year was 1857, three years after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that created a struggle that culminated in the Civil War. Erastus F. Beadle was a successful businessman having made his mark first as a printer and subsequently as a publisher. He is best remembered for creating the Dime Novel format in publishing that ultimately made him a millionaire. Sometime in 1856 this New Yorker succumbed to the myth and lure of the West. He left his profitable printing and publishing business and on March 9, 1857, he departed New York for Omaha, Nebraska. This Diary is his impressions and experiences on the frontier from March 9 to October 1, 1857. It is a remarkable peek into a way of life in the American West that is rich in history and, as always in the West, myth.
It took Beadle some three months to traverse from New York to Omaha and his descriptions of the conditions encountered on the "Big Muddy" river boats as well as trains, stagecoach, and wagons is both entertaining and instructive of the hardships facing travelers seeking fame and fortune in the West. His experiences in and around Omaha include this description of law and justice:"There is no law here except club laws and vigilance committee to enforce them. A man gets a fair hearing and justice done him but it is quick done and no heavy expence saddled on the County." As to the Indian situation he notes "The Indians have been greatly wronged, and as a general thing when there is Indian depredations the Whites are the first aggressors." His diary also includes detailed descriptions of the landscape, including his fascination with a night prairie fire, as well as the ever-present wind and rain in the spring to the summer heat. The apprehension of the inhabitants over the so-called "slavery stronghold" in Kansas along with the politics of the times is noted as well as a daily description of his workday and evening pleasures. His "self-help" medical care and treatment is ample evidence of the dangerous conditions existing on the frontier and a testament to the tenacity and courage of the settlers.
This is a wonderful first person account that is both entertaining and informative. It provides an intimate record of a period in American history that is gone and almost forgotten. Beadle's impressions, anecdotes, details, and descriptions of characters he met and the rigors of the times are indispensable in understanding the mostly mythical West.

In 1857, Erastus F. Beadle, a book and magazine publisher who ultimately became wealthy due to his introduction of the dime novel, headed west to stake a claim in Omaha, Nebraska Territory. An informative introduction to this engaging frontier diary, written by historian Ronald Naugle, tells us Beadle was born in New York in 1821, the son of Flavel and Polly Fuller Beadle. At the age of fourteen he took quite a shine to the publishing business, ultimately moving to Buffalo where he soon formed a company with his brother Irwin. Several magazine projects soon followed, successful enterprises that promised a bright future for the young Beadle. By the time he took his trip to Omaha, he was thirty-five years old, married with several children, and looking at an immensely successful career as a purveyor of printed materials. The call of the American West was, however, too strong a lure to resist. Beadle left New York and embarked on the long, often perilous journey to his new home in Omaha, promising to send for the wife and kids once he settled into his new career as landowner and real estate booster. Beadle returned to New York some six months later, disillusioned with prospects in the west but with a love for the freedom, clean air, and wide-open spaces of Nebraska. He ultimately became a millionaire from the sales of his books, retired to a spacious mansion in New York, and died in 1894.

Beadle's diary of his travels to and adventures in the Nebraska Territory, while incomplete as diaries are wont to be, does make for entertaining reading. The actual journey across the country, which constitutes a significant portion of the narrative, is full of humor, dangers, and intriguing people. It is difficult to read something written during a specific historical period and not look for passing references to larger issues of the day, and Beadle's travelogue is no exception. He meets several individuals as he wends his way to Omaha who live or lived in "Bloody Kansas," a region seething with discord between slavery and anti-slavery forces. One woman Beadle encounters on a steamboat actually fled from the carnage at Lawrence. When offered a job in Kansas, Beadle politely turns it down--probably due in part to the political problems in that state--even though the salary is quite large. He also meets a man who claimed to have married the widow of William Morgan, the person supposedly murdered by Freemasons in New York back in the 1820s, an event that touched off massive anti-Masonic outrages. When in Omaha, Beadle meets several Indians and laments the difficult conditions faced by Native Americans in the face of enormous white immigration into the region.

Erastus Beadle's job in Omaha was with the Sulphur Springs Land Company, an organization set up to develop a city just outside of Omaha called Saratoga. The boosters in this company envisioned a place with a grand hotel, bustling streets, and hundreds of occupied homes. Saratoga eventually failed due to an economic bust in the late 1850s that caused bank failures and declining property values. When Beadle was there, however, the place was booming. He sold plots, surveyed, helped bring in supplies, and did whatever else was needed to bring Saratoga to fruition. At some point, Beadle tired of his job, resigned his post, and acquired a huge tract of land he subsequently named Rock Brook Farm (near Center Street here in Omaha; predictably, a shopping center sits there now). The lure of farming a large plot of land wasn't enough to hold his attention, and he returned to his home state of New York and his family.

Many of Beadle's observations alternate between levity and misfortune. The conditions he describes concerning steamboat travel up the Missouri River are often humorous, as people jockey for sleeping space in cramped quarters or dine on atrocious foods. What really takes the cake are his complaints about Omaha's weather. Anyone who lives here will read this account and know not a lot has changed since the 1850s. Beadle describes, for example, frigid conditions towards the end of April that left ice two inches thick in his water basin. The appearance of snow in the same month is a source of profound mystery to the writer, as is the reality of a frigid, windy day followed by heat and humidity the next. Welcome to Nebraska, Mr. Beadle! Closely associated with his gripes about the inclement conditions are complaints about his medical condition. The writer, like most people living in the nineteenth century, worries endlessly about the most mundane coughs, sneezes, or rashes. Repeatedly, Beadle describes in detail how someone he has met either is sick or suddenly dies after a sickness. His own coughing fits that appear after arriving in Omaha worry him, as do the emergence of bodily aches and painful boils. The knowledge after the fact that someone he traveled with on a steamboat had smallpox sends him into fits. "Ham, Eggs, and Corn Cake" primarily highlights the perilous conditions involved in traveling and living in America during the nineteenth century.

"Ham, Eggs, and Corn Cake" has a limited appeal. Historians of Nebraska or other Midwestern states should probably read it, students in the area could use it for papers, or residents of Omaha might like to read it just to see what certain parts of the city once looked like. I found it a quick read, full of intriguing information and memorable anecdotes. I would like to say that traveling to Omaha is a lot easier that last time I checked. We just upgraded from stagecoaches to automobiles a few years ago, and we hardly travel by steamboat anymore since we heard about those flying chariot thingies a few months back. Seriously, give it a shot if you like nineteenth century travelogues.

Researching and writing the Wikipedia article about the town of Saratoga, which Beadle worked to create over the course of this diary, has been challenging. I've found this book essential to understanding the story of the town. Another boom and bust burg in the dusty Midwest, Saratoga had a super short lifespan before it's backers were busted in the Panic of 1857. Since then it's been absorbed by Omaha, and it's history largely forgotten. Learn more from this book, and what I've put together at [...]