The Diary of A Westward Bound Woman

Amelia Stewart Knight headed west along the Oregon Trail in 1853 with her husband, Dr. Joel
Knight, and their seven children. They began their journey from Monroe County, Iowa, on April 9 and reached their destination near Milwaukie, Oregon Territory, on September 17.

Amelia's day-by-day account of the arduous trek is included in Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, written and compiled by Lillian Schlissel, published in 1982 by Schocken Books, Inc. I was lucky enough to find a much used copy at a library book sale some years ago. Today I will share some excerpts illustrating the trials and excitement of the Trail west.

One thing never mentioned in Amelia's diary (it was too private to write about in those days) is the fact that she was pregnant with another child when the family left home. Professor Schlissel asks us to keep that in mind as we read. The intrepid pioneer woman seemed mostly concerned about weather and road conditions, and her children: Lucy, Jefferson, Plutarch, Seneca, Almira, Chatfield and Francis. Chatfield was the youngest. Amelia's eighth child was born on the road to the "land of milk and honey."

Saturday., April 9, 1853 STARTED FROM HOME about 11 o'clock and traveled 8 miles and camped in an old house; night cold and frosty.

Monday, April 11th Morn. Cloudy. and sign of rain . . . At noon it rains so hard we turn out and camp in a school house . . . rains all the afternoon and all night, very unpleasant. Jefferson and Lucy have the mumps. Poor cattle bawled all night.

The cold, windy. wet weather continues. She mentions suffering headaches, having three horses run off over night, no feed to be bought for their stock, having to feed them flour and meal; mile after mile in the mud. Yet, amazingly, they made up to 25 miles in a day.

Tuesday, April 26th Cold and clear; found corn last night at 2 dollars a bushel. Paid 12 dollars for about half a feed for our stock. I can count twenty. wagons winding up the hill ahead of us.

Friday, April 29th Cool and pleasant; saw the first Indians today. Lucy and Almira afraid and run into the wagon to hide. Done some washing and sewing.

Monday, May 2nd Pleasant evening, have been cooking, and packing things away for an early start in the morning. Threw away several jars, some wooden buckets, and all our pickles. Too unhandy to carry. Indians came to our camp every day, begging money and something to eat. Children are getting used to them.

Tuesday, May 3rd . . . here Plutarch is taken sick.

Friday, May 5th Here we passed a train of wagons on their way back, the head man had been drowned a few days before, in a river called Elkhorn . . . With sadness and pity I passed those who perhaps a few days before had been well and happy as ourselves.

Elkhorn River, Nebraska; wikipedia public domain

Sunday, May 8th Waiting to cross (the Elkhorn River). there are three hundred or more wagons in sight and as far as the eye can reach, the bottom is covered, on each side of the river, with cattle and horses. She explains how the men built a ferry out of a wagon bed and how everything had to unloaded, the wagons taken apart, and ferried across the river. Some cattle and horses drowned, but the next morning she says everyone is lively and merry.

Wednesday, May 11th Evening It has been very dusty yesterday and today. (The men all have their false eyes on to keep the dust out.) By false eyes, she probably meant goggles. I found mention of them online, being used on the Trail.

Over the next few days, Amelia writes of terrible wind and a dreadful storm with hail and lightning that killed two oxen and scattered many animals.

Tuesday, May 31st Evening -- Traveled 25 miles today. When we started this morning there were two large droves of cattle and about 50 wagons ahead of us, and we either had to stay poking behind them in the dust or hurry up and drive past them. It was no fool of a job to be mixed up with several hundred head of cattle, and only one road to travel in, and the drovers threatening to drive their cattle over you if you attempted to pass them. They even took out their pistols. At this point, Amelia's husband intervened, leading their company off the trail and passing the drovers and cattle, thus avoiding bloodshed. Later, while stopping for dinner, they saw the cattle coming, jumped for their teams and moved on, refusing to give up their lead. The temperature inside Amelia's wagon was 98 at noon.

Saturday, June 11th . . . we crossed this afternoon over the roughest and most desolate piece of ground that was ever made (called by some Devil's Crater.) (Not a drop of water, nor a spear of grass to be seen, nothing but barren hills, bare and broken rock, sand and dust) . . .

She writes of washing dust out of her eyes so she can see to cook supper, of struggling to keep animals from drinking alkali water that will kill them.

Tuesday, June 15th . . . passed Independence Rock this afternoon and crossed Sweetwater River on a bridge. Paid 3 dollars a wagon and swam the stock across. The river is very high and swift.

Independence Rock, central Wyoming; photo ca. 1870; wikipedia public domain

Tuesday, June 21st  We have traveled . . . over mountains close to banks of snow. Had plenty of snow water to drink.

Monday, June 27th Cold, cloudy and very windy -- more like November than June. I am not well enough to get out of the wagon this morning. . . It's children milk the cows, all hands help yoke these cattle the d---l's in them. She yells at the boys to hurry, seems a bit cross. No wonder!

Monday, July 4th . . . Thermometer up to 110 . . . I never saw mosquitoes as bad as they are here. Chat has been sick all day with fever, partly caused by mosquito bites . . .

Thursday, July 14th It is dust from morning until night . . . nothing but a sandy desert covered with wild sage brush, dried up with heat; however, it makes good firewood. She's not feeling well through this section and fears an attack by Digger Indians, who reportedly kill people in this area.

Friday, July 22nd . . . smell of carrion so bad that we left as soon as possible. The dead cattle were lying in every direction. . . Chatfield the rascal, . . . fell under the wagon. Somehow he kept from under the wheels and escaped with only a good or should I say, a bad scare. I never was so much frightened in my life.

Friday, August 5th . . . (Snake River Ferry) . . . Our turn to cross will come sometime tomorrow. There is one small ferry boat running here, owned by the Hudson's Bay Company. Have to pay 3 dollars a wagon. She gives an account of how Indians help swim the stock across the river for a small fee, taking the bridle of one horse and swimming across with it; other horses and cattle usually follow.

Three days later they nearly lost little Lucy. She got left behind due to a communications mix-up. Fortunately, she was picked up by another train behind them and delivered safely to her parents.

Friday, August 12th . . . Lost some of our oxen. We were traveling along slowly when he dropped dead in the yoke. We unyoked and turned out the odd ox, and drove around the dead one, and so it is all along the road, we are continually driving around the dead cattle . . . (I could hardly help shedding tears, when we drove round this poor ox who had helped us along thus far, and has given us his very last step.)  Heart wrenching! I nearly cried, too, reading this.

At this point they are near the mountains. They received more help from friendly Indians, bought salmon and potatoes from some. Temps were quite cold.

Friday, September 2nd . . . are now crossing Fall (or Deschutes it is called here) River on a ferry boat pay 3 dollars and swim the stock. This river is very swift and full of rapids . . .

Tuesday, September 6th  Evening -- After throwing away a good many things and burning up most of the deck boards of our wagons so as to lighten them, got my washing and cooking done and started on again. . . have camped near the gate or foot of the Cascade Mountans (here I was sick all night caused by my washing and working too hard.)

Amelia is close to giving birth, and mentions being sick several times. She writes of the extremely rough road over steep, rocky hills, with mud holes, fallen trees and such, yet she admires the dense forest calling it "the handsomest timber in the world."

The terrain she describes through the mountains is nothing short of brutal: corduroy roads, swamps, rocks, descents down steep, winding, slippery hills and canyons. Terrifying to say the least!

Friday, September 17th In camp yet. Still raining. Noon -- it has cleared off and we are all ready for a start again, for some place we don't know where . . .

A few days later my eighth child was born. After this we picked up and ferried across the Columbia River, utilizing skiff, canoes and flatboat to get across, taking three days to complete. Here husband traded two yoke of oxen for a half section of land with one-half acre planted to potatoes and a small cabin and lean-to with no windows. This is the journey's end.

You can find Amelia Stewart Knight's diary on Amazon:

The Way West: Journal of a Pioneer Woman, Hardcover – October 1, 1993

by Amelia Stewart Knight (Author),‎ Michael McCurdy (Illustrator)

Lyn Horner is a multi-published, award-winning author of western historical romance and romantic suspense novels, all spiced with paranormal elements. She is a former fashion illustrator and art instructor who resides in Fort Worth, Texas – “Where the West Begins” - with her husband and a gaggle of very spoiled cats. As well as crafting passionate love stories, Lyn enjoys reading, gardening, visiting with family and friends, and cuddling her furry, four-legged children.

Amazon Author Page: http://amzn.to/Y3aotC

Newsletter:  Lyn’s Romance Gazette http://eepurl.com/bMYkeX

Website:  Lyn Horner’s Corner 

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Digging your own Home by Linda Hubalek

Can you imagine digging your own home and living in (and around it) during our current summer heat and humidity?

My own Swedish ancestors did this very thing for their first home on the prairie.

Our family doesn’t have a photo of the original dugout dug in 1868 which was on the “Butter in the Well” farm, so here’s a photo from Kansas Memory to give you a visual view to contemplate while reading a passages from my book Butter in the Well. Young Swedish immigrant Kajsa Svensson comments on the building of their first “home”…

“April 8, 1868 I’m so hot and sweaty today. But I need my long-sleeved dress to protect me from the sun’s burning rays and the insects. We’ve been digging on the well for days. Carl fills the bucket up with dirt from the bottom of the hole, then I pull it up by a rope, dump the bucket and send it back down to him. He is very discouraged. First we almost get flooded out by the creek, and now we can’t find any water.  

 April 9th“I give up,” Carl said as he slumped at the bottom of the hole. “There’s no water here. We’re going to have to move to a different site.” We’re both tired, sunburned and disillusioned with our first week on our land. Tonight Carl took a walk to the river and shot a turkey for our supper. He needed a walk to cool down and I needing time to sit and rest my weary back and arms. We have so much digging ahead. I’m going to have to get used to doing hard physical work again. Life in Jacksonville softened my body. Christina is getting tired of being in the wagon but that’s the way it will have to be. If she wanders away in this tall grass, we could lose her forever.”

April 15^th
The creek runs through our land, across the south and up the west side until it empties into the river on the next section to the north of us. We moved our little camp into the middle of our farm on the far east edge since we know the creek can surprise us with a flood. Again we started the process of digging the well, one scoop at a time. Today we were rewarded with water.

April 18^thToday we start digging our home. I hate to live in the ground, burrowed in like a gopher, but we can’t afford the lumber it takes to build a house. What lumber we did find money for will be used sparingly. People say being in the ground protects you from the heat of the summer day and the freezing cold of winter. It will only be about 10 by 12 feet in size, just enough for our bodies and belongings. I’ll continue to cook outside on an open fire. We’ve scoured the creek for rocks to reinforce our walls. For our dugout to be a legal homestead house, we must have one window in it. We bought a small pane of glass in Salina that Carl will frame and put next to the door.  

April 23^rdCarl left ledges along the inside walls of the dugout to use for sitting and sleeping. He dug two additional recesses, one for a safe spot to sit a candle and another to hide our food away from the vermin.We cut strips of sod, about 12 by 18 by 2 inches, and laid them around the edge of our hole to build walls 3 feet high. This will give us the extra height to stand the door upright on the south end. Carl chopped down one tall straight tree by the river for the ridgepole. Fallen timber from the river and a few boards make up the roof rafters that were to nailed the ridgepole. We had a wagonload of tree limbs that we weaved in among the Next, dry grass, from around the house was layered on, then sod blocks on the roof. We threw dirt back on the roof from the hole that was dug. Just another day or two and we’ll move in.  

April 25^thWe saved the hard layer of sand from when we dug the well. This sand, and clay from the river bank, were mixed with water to plaster the walls of the dugout. It’s very crude, but it will have to do for our first winter. The dirt floor will get packed down in time. I’ll sprinkle my dishwater on it to help it harden. I wish we had rugs to cover the floor. It would make it warmer and easier to keep clean. I talked Carl into cutting up one board for a door. At least I’ll feel a little safer at night with it closed. The hungry howling of the wolves scares me.  

April 28^th Our sparse belongings from the wagon have filled the dugout in a hurry. Carl made two chairs out of a log he sawed up. Another board was fashioned into a table. The crate that held our supplies will be my cupboard. A lean-to bed is braced on the right side of the dugout, half on the ledge for support. Christina’s cradle fits under our bed when the cradle is not being used. A crude mattress was fashioned out of ticking filled with “prairie feathers.” I’m glad we brought along the bedding from our house in Jacksonville.Carl found some old buffalo horns when he was out walking. He nailed them up to the wall to hang our clothes on.  

April 29^th We hung the wagon sheet up as our ceiling for the dugout today. Last night there was a rattlesnake dangling from the rafters above Christina! Lord give me strength. I cannot get used to those things. Fear runs down my spine every time I see one. I’m tired of the snakes, mice and insects that drop down on us by surprise during a meal or during the night. Now that the weather has warmed up, the snakes are everywhere. I’m petrified one of us will get bitten and die on the spot. We were down at the creek yesterday for a few hours and came home to six vipers sunning themselves on the south side of the dugout. We’ve trampled down the grass around our “home,” but it does not seem to deter the snakes. I must carry a big stick wherever I go, so I can beat them out of our path. I can’t let Christina out of my sight now that she’s starting to walk.

We also have at least one pack rat that is stealing everything that I leave out. If I ever see it, I’m going to shoot it. I am almost as good a shot as Carl and I won’t hesitate at the trigger for the rat that stole my thimble.”

(Excerpts from Butter in the Well, © by Linda K. Hubalek)

Ready to build, and live in your home on the prairie now? Reading these passages makes me glad I'm living in the 21st century...

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

Linda Hubalek

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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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