Necessity is the Mother of Invention

By Anna Kathryn Lanier

Often, by the time the immigrants arrived at their destination, they were dire straits.  Their provisions were gone, their money was low and winter was setting in.  In many cases, the women who started out with a husband arrived a widow.

Lucinda Cox Brown left Illinois in 1847 and traveled with her husband, three small children, her father and his children and an uncle and his family. Her husband, Elias, took ill half-way through the journey, probably with typhoid and died.  I’m sure her extended family helped Lucinda make the rest of the trip to Oregon.  Once she arrived though, she was destitute, owning only the clothing she and her children wore.  With three children to feed and shelter, she made clothing and caps during the winter. The following spring and summer, she plaited wheat straw and made hats trimmed with ribbons.  They were a huge hit with the women in the area and Lucinda not only supported her family with her earnings, she made enough money that she was able to obtain a homestead in 1849.  She remarried two years later and had several more children.  It is not known if she continued to make hats after she married, but her innovation kept herself and her children from starving.

I’ve discussed Tabitha Brown in a previous post (find it HERE) and mentioned this already, but Tabitha’s story didn’t end with her arrival in Oregon.  Tabitha started the journey in her sixties, already a widow.  Her older brother-in-law traveled with her and Capt. John Brown took sick on the trip.  They arrived at the end of the trail much like, Lucinda, with only the clothes on their backs.  It was then that Tabitha discovered that what she thought was a button at the end of a glove’s fingertip was really a six-and-one-fourth cent piece.  She used the meager amount to “purchase three needles and traded off some of my old clothes to the squaws for buckskin, and worked it into gloves for the Oregon ladies and gentlemen.” During her first winter, she profited $30.

(Tabitha Brown)

Tabitha’s story doesn’t end here either, and though I’m more set to discuss those women who survived by gumption, I’ll tell the rest of her story.  In October 1847, while visiting her son on the West Tualatin Plains, (now called Forest Grove) she met the Reverend and Mrs. Harvey Clark, missionaries in the area. She also learned that many children were left orphaned on the trail.  She was moved by this revelation and asked The Reverend Clark “Why has Providence frowned on my and left me poor in this world? Had He blessed me with riches as He has many others, I know right well what I should do. I should establish myself in a comfortable house and receive all poor children and be a mother to them.”  Believing in her sincerity, Rev. Clark provided her with the means to start up a school for orphans.  In the Spring of 1848, Tabitha “found all things in readiness for me to go into the old meetinghouse and cluck up my chickens for the next Monday morning.” The first school in the territory to board children, local families also sent their children to be educated. Those who could afford it paid a dollar a week per child.  By 1851, her ‘family’ had 40 people at Tualatin Academy.  In 1854, the territorial legislature altered the academy’s charter to provide for the creation of Pacific University.  The academy and the college thrived under Tabitha’s tutelage. The growth of a local public high school caused the Tualatin Academy to be closed in 1915 and Pacific University stood on its own -- a pioneer institution of higher education. Tabitha died in 1858 and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Salem, Oregon.

Luzena Stanley Wilson learned her first day in a California gold mine town what she was worth…or rather what her cooking was worth. Luzena, her husband Mason and their two young sons left Missouri in 1849 in search of riches in the gold fields where gold “lay in the creeks and mountain valleys, ready to be scooped out with just a spoon.”  A few months later, they had crossed the plains, mountains and valleys, “plodding, unvarying monotony, vexations, exhaustions, throbs of hope and depths of despair” to arrive in Nevada City, California.  After scrubbing her boys back to their natural hue, Luzena set about fixing supper.  A man approached and offered her $5 for biscuit.  Before she could answer, he upped the offer to $10 (about $250 in today’s dollars).  No fool, she took the money and realized where her value lay.  She studied the market and discovered that the local hotel charged a $1 a meal.  As Mason searched for gold, Luzena set up a restaurant, chopping the steaks and planks for tables herself. Her husband arrived back home, weary and worn one evening to see 20 men eating dinner his wife had cooked, each paying a $1 for the meal. Less than two months later, she had saved over $700 and calculated what to do with her profit. With Mason’s help, they built a bare wooden building and served between 75 to 200 boarders a week.  Her reputation for clean beds and good food drew in the customers. 

(Luzena Wilson)

Eventually, the Wilsons built a store and a bank.  But all their ventures, hotel, store and bank were destroyed in a fire that swept through Nevada City.  The family was left with the clothes on their backs and $500, a very small amount considering at one time, Luzena had stashed over $200,000 in her bedroom.  The family sold their plot of land and moved on to Vaca (later to become Vacaville….a town I lived in as a toddler).  There they started over and eventually became substantial land owners. Twice more, Luzena lost her businesses to fire, but each time, she recovered and survived.  Luzena died in 1902 in San Francisco.

Mrs. A. B. Eaton opened her door in San Francisco one day to find a distraught young lady who had just landed in the port city after a journey around Cape Horn from the east.  Her brother was supposed to meet her, but he wasn’t there when the ship arrived.  The girl was in a strange town with no one to help, but turned to the woman with a kind face.  This encounter led Mrs. Eaton to establish, with the help of churchwomen from various denominations, the Ladies Protection and Relief Society, dedicated to rendering “Protection and assistance to strangers, to sick and dependent women and children."  The organization provided an orphanage and temporary shelter to women in need.

Women did what they had to do to survive in the harsh new land.  If they could cook, they served food, they built hotels or boarding houses or they did laundry. The men may have left the East in search of fortune, but, as it turned out, they really didn’t want to leave civilization.

References:

Chartier, JoAnn and Enss, Chirs. With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush. The

Globe Pequot Press, 2000. Guilford, CT.

Reiter, Joan Swallow. The Old West: The Women. Time-Life Books, Inc., 1978. New York, NY

Schlissel, Lillian. Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. Schocken Books, Random House, Inc, 2004.

New York, New York.

Further reading:

Lucinda’s bonnets: http://labricoleuse.livejournal.com/32453.html

A list of Pioneer and Immigrant Women with short bios: http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nwa/pioneer.html

Luzena Wilson: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/peopleevents/p_wilson.html

Tabitha Brown, Mother of Oregon

by Anna Kathryn Lanier

 I wrote about Tabitha Brown’s covered wagon journey to Oregon in a previous blog (find it HERE) and made short mention about her story after her arrival in Oregon.  For those unfamiliar with Mrs. Brown, she started the 1846 cross-country journey in her sixties, already a widow.  Her older brother-in-law traveled with her.  They arrived at the end of the trail with only the clothes on their backs.  It was then that Tabitha discovered that what she thought was a button at the end of a glove’s fingertip was really a six-and-one-fourth cent piece.  She used the meager amount to “purchase three needles and traded off some of my old clothes to the squaws for buckskin, and worked it into gloves for the Oregon ladies and gentlemen.” During her first winter, she profited $30.

In October 1847, about a year after arriving, Mrs. Brown visited her son on the West Tualatin Plains, (now called Forest Grove). There she met the Reverend and Mrs. Harvey Clark, missionaries in the area, and learned many children arrived as orphans when their parents died on journey west.  She was moved by this revelation and asked The Reverend Clark “Why has Providence frowned on my and left me poor in this world? Had He blessed me with riches as He has many others, I know right well what I should do. I should establish myself in a comfortable house and receive all poor children and be a mother to them.”  Believing in her sincerity, Rev. Clark provided Mrs. Brown with the means to start up a school for orphans.  In the Spring of 1848, she “found all things in readiness for me to go into the old meetinghouse and cluck up my chickens for the next Monday morning.”

The first school in the territory to board children, local families also sent their children to be educated. Those who could afford it paid a dollar a week per child.  By 1851, her ‘family’ had 40 people at Tualatin Academy.  In 1854, the territorial legislature altered the academy’s charter to provide for the creation of Pacific University.  The academy and the college thrived under Mrs. Brown’s tutelage. The growth of a local public high school caused the Tualatin Academy to be closed in 1915 and Pacific University stood on its own -- a pioneer institution of higher education.   The University still thrives today, thanks to a woman who wanted only to care for and education orphans.

Pacific University

For her representation as a person of “distinctive pioneer heritage, and the charitable and compassionate nature, of Oregon's people,” Tabitha Brown was proclaimed The Mother of Oregon and is one of only six women whose name is inscribed in the legislative chambers of the Oregon State Capitol.

Tabitha died in 1858 and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Salem, Oregon.

For further reading:

Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1849 by Kenneth L. Holmes

http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/brown_tabitha_moffat_1780_1858_/#.U8NeUpRdWSo

Anna Kathryn Lanier
Romance Author, A GIFT BEYOND ALL MEASURE

http://aklanier.com/

Never let your memories be greater than your dreams. ~Doug Ivester 

Covered Wagon Women I

I have discovered that the era of Western Expansion interesting, especially the trials and tribulations of those on the western trails. I've purchased several books that recount true stories of women who travel West in covered wagons. One book, Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1849 by Kenneth L. Holmes is an excellent resource book. He reprints actual diaries written while on the trail and letters written either on the trail or after they reach their destination. Holmes also gives a bit of a biography on each woman. One of the women whose letters he reprints is Tabitha Brown (right), who made the trip starting in April 1846.

Mrs. Brown was a widow and sixty-six years old when she decided to travel from her home in St. Charles, Missouri to Oregon with her seventy-seven year old brother-in-law, retired sea captain John Brown, and two of her children and thirteen of her grandchildren.

While most journeys of this type were dangerous, The Brown family's was particularly hazardous. Mrs. Brown expresses in a letter to her sister and brother, penned after her arrival in Oregon, that the first part of their trip was “pleasing and prosperous.” But all that changed in August when they still had 800 miles to go to Oregon City. Instead of keeping to the tried and true route, “three of four trains of emigrants were decoyed off by a rascally fellow...[who] assured us that he had found a NEAR CUT-OFF; that if we would follow him we would be in the settlement long before those who had gone down the Columbia.” The decision to follow this man was tragic for many of the families.

Mrs. Brown relays that the man took their money and ran, leaving the train “to the depredations of Indians, wild beasts and starvation...we had sixty miles desert without grass or water, mountains to climb, cattle giving out, wagons breaking, emigrants sick and dying…hostile Indians to guard against.”

The men had to hack and clear a trail for them, as there was none. The way behind them was “strewn with dead cattle, broken wagons, beds, clothing and everything but provisions of which we were nearly destitute.” People were caught in the Canyon for two or three weeks, their food running out, they themselves dying of fatigue or starvation. She does not give detail of how she came to lose everything, but writes that her daughter and son-in-law insisted that she and Captain Brown go on ahead by horseback to meet up with wagons that would have food (they stayed behind to give their cattle rest). Her brother-in-law was so weak that he fell off his horse and she had to struggle to get him back up on it. They failed to meet up with the next wagon train before dark and had to spend the night alone in Indian territory, only to discover the next morning that 1) they were only half a mile from the train and 2) the Indians had killed a man just a short distance from where they'd camped.

They were found the next morning and taken to the next train, where fresh venison was available. However, they were far from safe. They still had two mountains to climb and winter was setting in. They were able to travel only two or three miles a day. They finally decided that it would impossible to reach a settlement before spring and decided to settle in for the winter. Mrs. Brown's son-in-law set off on his own to find a settlement, in the hopes of bringing back provisions.

Now as it turned out, her other son had left for Oregon six days ahead of her party and had already reached their destination. He heard rumors of the “wayward” train and he set out with six pack-horses to find the “suffering emigrants at the south.” Shortly after her son-in-law left, the two met up and they returned to the train with the provisions.

Five miles down the road from where they'd camped, they meet up with mixed-blood French-Indians and hired several of them to guide the train to a settlement. On December 24th, four months after they made their dreadful decision to take the 'short-cut,' those who survived the journey arrived at the first settlers' house, a Methodist minister, who offered Mrs. Brown and Captain Brown a place to stay until spring. In exchange for room and board, Mrs. Brown ran the house, because the minister's wife “was as ignorant and useless as a Heathan Goddess.” She also discovered that in her glove was not a button, as she'd assumed, but a “six and one-fourth cent piece” or as the footnote says “one-eighth of a Spanish dollar coin” and not worth a lot of money. But she used it to purchase three needles and traded some of her old clothe for buckskin. She then made gloves out of the buckskin, sold them and made herself $30.00.

As far as I can tell, all of Mrs. Brown's family made it to Oregon as well and Mrs. Brown, even at her advanced age, went on to establish herself as a pillar of the community in the new territory. She established a school for the local children, including orphans, with the help of friends and neighbors. The school was “the forerunner” for Pacific University.

So, this is just one of the fascinating stories to be found out there, one of the 'facts' that we can base our stories on...the question is, will anyone believe us?

What is a strange fact or story that you've come across in your research?

This blog first appeared at Chatting with Anna Kathryn, April 17, 2009.