How Settlers in the West Survived By Cora Leland

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How Settlers in the West Survived

By Cora Leland

“Nobody can fully understand how tough life was in the West, or the courage it took to settle a new land with all its challenges. Those who were equal to the task were heroes and heroines, and their lives are worth remembering.” – R.O. Lane

The story of Willa Cather’s family leaving Back Creek, Virginia for the wilds of Nebraska was echoed thousands of times until the frontier was finally stated as closed in 1893.

Over the years, most settlers developed surprising resiliency.  For example, young Mollie Dorsey and her family left an area similar to Ms. Cather’s to move to the Great Plains.  Although their mother worried a great deal about how her children had no school to attend, no church, no doctor, and snakes crawled throughout the forest where they lived,  the girls were thrilled to be through with the competitive life back East. Their one room cabin was all they ever wanted from life.

Like Mollie and her mother, settlers usually planted vegetable gardens, and in the wagons, they’d carried poultry to raise.  One unusual trait – by today’s standards – was for more established people to welcome new settlers into their homes, not for a meal or two, but to sleep on their cabin’s dirt floor for a week or longer, while the newcomers’ home was built. Families continued to help each other, building their barns, plowing and haying each other’s meadows and ‘proving up’ their homes.

Friends and relatives from home paid calls to these new areas. A visit or a call included at least one full meal and often stretched over a few days. Half a dozen people would visit a friend, unannounced, resting gossiping and talking, eating and usually leaving after spending the day.  If the weather turned bad, the hosts would instantly invite their visitors to spend the night.

One lucrative way for young men to earn money was to travel their part of the state on the harvest circuit, sometimes on foot, sometimes by ‘conveyance,’ working at farms doing whatever the season dictated, sleeping in the barns and eating with the families.  Work in more expensive Colorado was dependent on the weather, the terrain, or the nature of the city.  For example, Rolf Johnson walked from his family’s central Nebraska homestead to Colorado in June, 1879.

Farm work included training horses, breaking them of bad habits like running away with their riders or scraping them off.  Often the farms were owned by wealthy Denver men. No provision was made for their helpers’ broken bones or ruined clothes if the horses broke loose.

However, this kind of work seems to have been a masculine pursuit. Women and girls usually lived quietly with their parents. Those who didn’t become servants would leave their homes for a few months at a time – ‘a season’ – staying with affluent women as their seamstress.

   

Clothes for women and children were made by hand sewing, and skilled needlewomen were in demand. Sewing machines did exist, but not many families owned them. Men’s clothes were inexpensive and readymade, though some men continued to wear homemade clothes, sewn from home spun fabric.

Women could work in Colorado at sewing, cooking, and millinery and be well paid.  There a seamstress could set her own rates, or so say the journals and diaries.  The cost of living, though, was much higher in Colorado.  In remote mining towns, spools of thread were 10 cents or more; in Denver they were 25 cents each.  In Nebraska they were five cents.  A dozen eggs in Denver was $2. The currency rate in Denver was gold dust; women carried it in little bottles.

Women could earn and save money, though it took a great deal of hard work and attention to detail. The building boom in Colorado meant more workers needing cooked food.  Cooking, or ‘boarding’, usually required at least two women and one or two cleaning helpers if the job was to run more than a week. There was a kitchen to be established – though sometimes cooking had to be done outdoors over a fire bounded by rocks.

 

Then there were tables and benches to be built. Sometimes this could be arranged through bartering meals for labor; the cooks were expected to find the lumber and order it. As far as cleaning helpers and other jobs, the cooks sometimes hired locals at very low rates.

 

Cooks had the authority to say what they would cook and what would be impossible. In the Rockies, vegetables were often scarce, and sometimes cooks demanded that they’d be unable to cook more than meat dishes and dessert.  If they had to cook over open fires, the dishes they’d serve would be different: no cakes or pies.

Such hard work was a stepping stone for women who wanted to work for themselves.  Boarding brought in a good sum of money, and the next rung up the ladder was buying or renting a tailoring or millinery shop and hiring seamstresses to work there.  These clever women built clientele and launched their businesses, and they’d started with little more than a sewing kit and good needlework skills.  

During their first year of marriage, Mollie and By Sanford moved to Denver, crossing the plains by covered wagon.  He was a blacksmith, but had learned to be a jack of all trades. When they arrived in Denver, they moved at least a dozen times. By was finally able to build a one room house for them, but soon after it was completed, the town was flooded.

The waters swept homes, schools and livestock away, first at Cherry Creek itself. When the flood swept into Mollie’s street, some neighbor boys saw the flood waters rising and carried the young couple’s few precious possessions away in a wagon.  Unfortunately, Denver was a lawless kind of city, frightening Mollie with killings in saloons and dens of vice.  (In the wagons crossing the prairie, she cried when her husband swore at the teams.)

When Mollie Dorsey Sanford first came to Colorado she was a versatile young wife and in today’s jargon, she was an entrepreneur.  However, her funds were always very low. She and her husband, By, had sold most of their belongings so he could buy machinery for his gold mine.
This photo from 1864 Colorado is a gold prospector's gift to his parents.

She was wise, bartering dairy and eggs for as many things as she could.  (In those days, people kept cows and poultry in town.) The city of Boulder was made up of twelve log cabins; Mollie and By tried living up there, but she got sick, and By had to walk up the mountain to come home from his job as a day watchman each evening. Denver’s population was 5,000, including suburbs like Cherry Creek.

A Nebraskan about her age whom she did not know, Rolf Johnson, grew prosperous while he worked in Colorado, finding jobs as he could, in the mountains or in town, living in hotels in Denver, strapping on guns while he lived there. A young man’s life was very different, working, but also visiting theaters, the opera house, saloons and the red light district. Married or single, Mollie was dependent on her employers’ dispositions.

Rolf Johnson returned to Nebraska after a few months; Mollie and By Sanford lived permanently in Denver. Willa Cather graduated from The University of Nebraska in Lincoln, worked and lived in Nebraska, then in many areas, including Pennsylvania and New York.

Further Reading

Dee Brown.  The American West

Ruth B. Moynihan, Susan Armitage, Christiane Fisher Dichamp. So Much to Be Done

Tom Streissguth. Writer of the Plains. A Story about Willa Cather

Rolf Johnson, ed. Richard E. Jensen. Happy as a Big Sunflower. Adventures in the West, 1876-1880

Mollie. The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories, 1857-1866

REVIEW OF TRAIL OF THREAD

Caroline Clemmons here filling in for Lyn Horner. Lyn let me know her computer fell ill and is in the computer hospital. You can check out Lyn's great books at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Lyn+Horner&ref=nb_sb_noss She writes western historical and paranormal romantic suspense.

Leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for an e-copy of DARLIN' IRISH, by Lyn Horner.

I'm reposting an article I wrote long ago, so perhaps if you read it then you've forgotten it.

Notice woman and children inside the wagon,
skeleton of cow or buffalo in lower left,
some men walk, some ride horses

TRAIL OF THREAD by Linda Hubalek

Review by Caroline Clemmons

I love history, both reading and writing tales of long ago. I especially like the westward expansion stories of brave and sometimes foolhardy pioneers who left homes in search of a better future or adventure. Some of the books I’ve read are full of anachronisms or incorrect information. That’s why I am such a fan of Linda Hubalek’s TRAIL OF THREAD. Linda used family information as a basis for her novel.

I have great sympathy for the wives of the men who moved west. Most had no say in whether they stayed or moved. Even those who wanted to travel to claim new land faced hard months ahead. Imagine walking most of the way, cooking on a campfire, doing laundry, lack of privacy, doing without regular bathing, and the other hardships. I fear I would have made a terrible pioneer. Yet, that was the only way some of the pioneers had of bettering their economic situation. 

Linda Hubalek has graciously allowed me to quote from her book TRAIL OF THREAD, in which the heroine, Dorothy Pieratt, describes preparing for the trip West from Kentucky to Kansas:

“We debated, but finally packed two wagons for each family. We felt it was better for the animals’ sake to limit the weight on each wagon to around 2000 pounds instead of overloading one wagon....Since we need six oxen per wagon, we bought extra animals a few weeks ago. John decided to use oxen instead of mules because the oxen are easily managed, patient, and gentle--even with the children--and not easily driven off or prone to stampeding like mules and horses...After much discussion, John agreed to hitch a cage of chickens on the back of the wagon.

Yesterday we sold everything that wouldn’t fit in the wagons at a public auction on our farm. The strain of the day is still on my mind. This morning I’ve been ready to fetch something and then I stop in midstep, wondering if it’s tucked in the wagon or was sold yesterday. It was hard to see most of the animals and all but a few chickens leave the place. But we can’t take everything along, and we need the money.

New wagon beds were built using seasoned oak boards. Sides were jointed together. No nails were used that could work out along the bumpy road and spell disaster. Along the inside of the three-foot-high sides, John built long boxes running the length of the wagon for storage. These boxes will serve as seats during the day if the children want to ride inside. We just add boards cut to fit across the storage boxes, put bedding on top, and the wagon is outfitted for sleeping. The boards fit in a wooden holder that runs along the outside of the wagon. They can also be used to make a bench or table when laid across stumps, or, heaven forbid, as lumber for a coffin.

I had a big hand in preparing the wagons, too. The wagon beds were fitted with a framework of hickory bows high enough to give head clearance, and I hand-sewed long pieces of cloth together for coverings. It was quite an undertaking. It had to be tight, strong enough to withstand heavy winds, and rainproof so things inside don’t get soaked. Even though it was extra work, I ended up making them a double thickness to keep out the cold. A dark muslin went over the framework first, then a heavy white linen. The dark cloth cuts down on the brightness of the reflection as we walk beside the wagon. I coated the outside material with a mixture of hot beeswax and linseed oil for waterproofing. It turned the material a sand color, which should help the reflection, too. The covering is drawn together on the ends by a strong cord to form tight circles. End flaps can be buttoned on to completely seal the wagon top. My stitches and buttonholes will be tested by the first storm we run into. I even stitched pockets on the inside covering to hold little things like our comb, sunbonnets, and other personal things I didn’t want out of reach.

Teams of oxen. The woman has a stick in
her hand, presumably to urge oxen.

John borrowed a guidebook to Oregon and California from a neighbor, which suggested that for each adult going to California, a party should carry 200 pounds of flour, 30 of hardtack, 75 of bacon, 10 of rice, 5 of coffee, 2 of tea, 25 of sugar, 2 of saleratus, 10 of salt, a half-bushel each of cornmeal, parched, and ground corn, and a small keg of vinegar. We’re not going to California (unless the men change their minds), so we shouldn’t need that much per person, but we’ll need supplies until we get crops and garden planted and harvested. Who knows how long it will be until towns with stores get established in the new territory?

I’ll take one barrel of pickled cucumbers along to prevent scurvy...the decision of what kind and quality of item to trade for had to be made...The mill sells different grades of flour. I wish I could have bought the superfine flour, sifted several times...I bought the next grade, middlings, for our cooking. It’s much more coarse and granular, but it serves the purpose...The mill’s shorts, a cross between wheat bran and coarse whole wheat flour, looked clean, so I also bought 125-pound sack of it...

We can’t afford to carry the flour in heavy barrels, so it is mostly stacked in fifty-pound cotton cloth to cut down on weight. Because the flour is not kiln-dried, we double-sacked it in a leather bag. If the flour absorbs too much moisture, I’ll end up with a heavy loaf and will have to add more flour to my baking.

Sorghum molasses, our main sweetener, will make the trip in small wooden kegs...For special occasions, I bought three cones of white sugar. The New Orleans sugar we buy reasonably in the stores her may go for top dollar on the frontier. The cones resemble pointed hats. They are molded at the factory, and wrapped in blue paper. Usually I leave the cones whole and use sugar snippers, a cross between scissors and pliers, to break off lumps as I need them. To save space on the trip, I ground up the cones and divided the two types of sugar (the white sugar on the top gradually changes to brown sugar on the bottom), then sifted to remove the impurities. The storekeeper said I should pack it in India rubber sacks to keep it dry, but I decided not to add that extra expense. I tucked the cone papers in the wagon because I can extract the indigo dye to color yarn and material blue.

I also bought a small quantity of low grade brown sugar since it is ten cents cheaper than the cones. It’s dark, smelly, sticky, and sometimes dirty, but it still gives sweet taste to cooking.

Parched corn is another sacked commodity in the wagon. The kernels were sun dried last fall and I’ll grind them into meal with the mortar when I need it.

Smoked bacon was double-wrapped in cloth, put in wooden boxes, and covered with bran to prevent the fat from melting during the trip. I cooked the crocks of cut meat I had left into a thick jelly. After it set up in pans and dried, we broke it into pieces and packed it in tins. If I add boiling water to some, we’ll have portable soup on the trail.

Smaller sacks of beans, rice, salt, saleratus, and coffee are wedged around the whiskey jugs underneath the wagon seat. The medicine box, filled with tiny cloth sachets holding dried medicinal herbs and little medicine bottles, is wedged on top, ready for an emergency.

I put the sacks of yeast cakes, dried bead, and hardtack inside one of the long boxes, along with the box of homemade soap bars. I’ll have small sacks of each staple in the back box and refill them from the bigger sacks when I need to.

The back end of the wagon drops down partway on chains and will serve as a preparation table for food or for other jobs. The provision box faces the back so it can be opened up without hauling the box out of the wagon every time. It has my tinware, cooking utensils and small sacks of necessities for cooking every day.

Wish I could have brought all my kitchen utensils, but I settled for two spider skillets, three Dutch ovens of various sizes, the reflector for baking, the coffee pot, the coffee mill, the mortar and pestle, a few baking pans, knives, and my rolling pin.

Walking out to the wagons for the umpteenth time, it struck me that they are starting to look like a peddler’s caravan. They are overflowing with items attached to the sides. The wooden washtubs and zinc washboard are fastened to one side of the wagon. The walking plow is lashed to the other side. Small kegs of water, vinegar, and molasses fit in where needed to balance the wagon. Everybody can see what we own because it’s hanging in plain sight.

The second wagon is packed even tighter than the first with household and farming tools we’ll need after we get to our new land. All the boxes are packed tight so they won’t slide around, rattle, or spill. I hope we won’t have to unpack it until we reach our destination.”

~~~~~~~~~

If you like history, you probably share my fascination with all the steps to get ready for their trip. I can’t quite picture meat cooked into jelly or how long that would take, but the process sounds efficient. I suppose that was pioneer for fast food. ☺

You can learn more about Linda Hubalek’s TRAIL OF THREAD at Amazon  https://www.amazon.com/Trail-Thread-Womans-Westward-Journey-ebook/dp/B003VS0EWC This is the first of a series.

How will you inspire your ancestors?

One of the best sources of learning about life on the trail in the 1800s is the Covered Wagon Women Series, published by the University of Nebraska Press. The eleven volume series featured firsthand accounts of women actually traveling on the trails on which moved families west. Kenneth L. Holmes who complied the series also put together Best of Covered Wagon Women. Here's the description which summed up the whole series well.

The diaries and letters of women who braved the overland trails during the great nineteenth-century westward migration are treasured documents in the study of the American West...They were selected for the power with which they portray the hardship, adventure, and boundless love for friends and family that characterized the overland experience. Some were written with the skilled pens of educated women. Others bear the marks of crude cabin learning, with archaic and imaginative spelling and a simplicity of expression. All convey the profound effect the westward trek had on these women.

For too long these diaries and letters were secreted away in attics and basements or collected dust on the shelves of manuscript collections across the country. Their publication gives us a fresh perspective on the pioneer experience.

This series always makes me think of my own life's record. My mother gave me a page-a-day diary for Christmas the year before I got married. She thought that I could record the planning of my August wedding in this little hard bound book.

I started on January 1st, 1976, my fiancé's  birthday, telling of what we did for his special day. And I continued to write short bits of my daily life, besides the intended lists of preparations for our wedding.

Forty years later I’m still writing in a page-a-day book. I sometimes get behind and don’t write for a week or two, but the majority of my life is recorded the forty books that are stacked in a file cabinet.

The neat thing is I can go back to any given day in any of those years to see what I did, or what the weather was like. I can go back to remember a special person’s birth or death, and be drawn into the same feeling I had that exact day.

My family knows I’ve written down my life—and theirs— through the years. I haven’t written down anything that will embarrass anyone, but I think the entries will give the next generations a good glimpse of their ancestor’s lives, and the times we’ve lived in.

Will that inspire them to keep their own diaries? I really doubt it, although it would be great if someone was motivated to write and pass down more of the family history.

What I hope my diary entries would do is to inspire descendants to remember family members as I mention their birthdays, to learn the history of the family pieces they inherited, and to give them a sense of whom their family was—and did during their lifetimes.

How you could pass on your life story to your descendants. How will you inspire them? It’s up to you….

Thanks for stopping by to enjoy today's Sweethearts of the West Blog.

Linda Hubalek

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The Covered Wagon, Packing, & Hitting the Trail

by Anna Kathryn Lanier

Conestoga wagons were the well-known wagons of the east, used by traders of the west for their large size and ability to carry up to five tons of cargo.  The immigrant family soon learned, however, that the Conestoga wagon was too large and heavy for their needs.  Animals would die from exhaustion before they reached the end of the long trail.  Instead, pioneers turned to the Prairie Schooner, a wagon half the size of the Conestoga.  At 10-12 feet long, 4 feet wide and about 3 feet deep, it would hold 2,000 pounds of goods, half of that food.  It could also be pulled by fewer animals than the Conestoga required.  A bonnet treated with linseed oil for waterproofing topped the wagon base and made the wagon 10 feet tall. At about $100, it is one of the more expensive items needed for the trip.

 Hardwood was used for the wagon bed because it resisted shrinking in the dry desert air and painting it with tar would render it watertight for floating across rivers. The side boards of the wagon were bowed outward to keep the rain from dripping into the wagon from the bonnet.  The front wheels were smaller (44-inch diameter) than the back wheels (50-inch diameter) to help with handling the wagon and to allow the wagon to take sharper turns.

Although the wagon wheels were also made of hardwood and rimmed with iron (heated until they expanded and then slipped into place), it was not uncommon for them to break. When this happened, the family furniture often became a wagon wheel.

The space inside the wagon, about 40 square feet, didn’t give much room for family heirlooms or large pieces of furniture.  Families had to decide what to bring, and of course, food was at the top of the list. An 1845 emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California suggests that the pioneers take along: 200 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of bacon, 30 pounds of hardtack, 10 pounds of coffee, 20 pounds of sugar, and 10 pounds of salt.  Additionally, families would pack rice, beans, tea, vinegar, chipped beef, smoked meat, dried fruit, and canned vegetables. Other common items taken by the pioneers, aside from clothing were: a medicine chest, seeds and seedlings, beds, tents and tent poles, tools, horseshoes, guns, plows, shovels, axes, animal feed and a water barrel.  Butter churns were strapped to the side or back of the wagon. Fresh milk would be put into the churns in the morning and the natural movement of the wagon as it crossed the uneven and rutted trail would churn the milk into butter by evening.

Also on the outside of the wagon was a “jockey box.”  This would hold the tools and parts needed to repair the wagon: iron bolts, lynch pins, skeins, nails, iron hoops and a jack. In addition, a feed box for the animals could be found fastened to the side of the schooner.

The family packed carefully, heavier items and those that would not be used on the trip were packed first. Bolts of cloth, linen and good clothing not used on the journey, along with family treasures were packed into the trunks and stowed away. The box with the pots, pans and cooking utensils would be placed near the back of the wagon for easy access.  The family bible was given a special place, most likely with easy access for daily and nightly reading. Daily clothing would be hung on hooks inside the wagon.

The choice of animals to pull the prairie schooner was oxen or mules.  The farmers who went usually preferred oxen, mainly because they had worked with them on the farms. Oxen were stronger, more tolerable of the prairie grass and easier to work with than mules.  Oxen were also cheaper to buy, $60 dollars or so per team compared to over $100 per mule.  And one needed fewer oxen to pull the wagons, than mules. However, mules were faster than oxen and those in a hurry to get west would buy mules. Horses could also be used, but they did not fare as well on the long haul.

St. Louis is called “The Gateway to the West” because it was the last trace of civilization before entering the vast unknown of the west. St. Louis started as a trading post for fur trappers, traders and mountain men. It was the jumping off point for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  Along with Independence, St. Louis was a major ‘met up point’ for the wagon trains of pioneers going west. They were the places to trade horses, buy fresh oxen, purchase last minute supplies and gather up-to-date information about the journey and route that lay ahead of them.

Mrs. Francis Sawyer gives an account of her journey, along with her husband, from Louisville, KY to St. Louis, Missouri in her journal. On April 25^th, 1852, they left on the Pike No. 9 steamer bound for St. Louis.  They took with them their wagon, two mules and supplies bought in Louisville.  The riverboat stopped at Mr. Sawyer’s father’s farm in Hancock County so they could collect mules purchased from the father. In St. Louis, they changed to “a small Missouri-river steamboat” bound for St. Joseph.

Once there, they finished purchasing their supplies, as well as a horse for Frances’s use and an additional mule.  With themselves and their supplies ready, they travelled six miles outside of town to ‘officially’ start the journey.

By the late 1850’s, 55,000 people per year were making the journey west.

Now it's time to share your thoughts. If you were leaving home for a 2,000 mile journey, what one item in your home would be a ‘must take’ and why?  Think about it, these men and women were leaving everything and everyone behind   and wagons could only hold so much.  What would you take?

Works Cited

Bartley, Paula, and Loxton, Cathry. Plains Women: Women of the American West. New

York, NY: Cambridge  University Press, 1991.

Erickson, Paul. Daily Life in a Covered Wagon. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1994.

“Great Gateway to The American Western Expansion: Wagon Trains, Fur Traders,

Mountain Man.”  Linecamp Online. http://www.linecamp.com/museums/americanwest/hubs/great_gateway_west/great_gateway_west.html 

Holmes, Kenneth L.  Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western

Trails, 1852. Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Kalman, Bobbie. Life of the Old West: Wagon Train . New York, NY: Crabtree

Publishing Company, 1999

Spartacus Education. 2011. July 9, 2011.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWwagontrain.htm

“Wagons.” Historical City Oregon Online. 2011.  July 7, 2011.

http://www.historicoregoncity.org/end-of- the-oregon-trail-history/70-oregon-trail-history/156-wagons

“The Wyker Prairie Schooner at Space Farms Museum: Went West and Back ‘Agin’.’

Space Farms Zoo and Museum Online. 2011, July 7, 2011. http://www.spacefarms.com/2003.htm

Pictures are from royalty-sites (most likely Dreamstime.com) and should not be used without purchasing them.