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Amouage memoir man4/2/2023 Our clothing was packed – not in Saratoga trunks – but in strong canvas bags plainly marked. Under the spring seats were compartments in which were stored many articles useful for the journey, such as a well filled work basket and a full assortment of medicines, with lint and bandages for dressing wounds. A board about a foot wide extended over the wheels on either side the full length of the wagon, thus forming the foundation for a large and roomy second story in which were placed our beds. In this little room was placed a tiny sheet-iron stove, whose pipe, running through the top of the wagon, was prevented by a circle of tin from setting fire to the canvas cover. At the right and left were spring seats with comfortable high backs, where one could sit and ride with as much ease as on the seats of a Concord coach. The entrance was on the side, like that of an old-fashioned stage coach, and one stepped into a small room, as it were, in the centre of the wagon. So the car in which she was to ride was planned to give comfort. Keyes, tried to dissuade her from the long and fatiguing journey, but in vain she would not be parted from my mother, who was her only daughter. Her sons in Springfield, Gersham and James W. Grandma Keyes, who was seventy-five years of age, was an invalid, confined to her bed. In delicate health for many years, yet when sorrows and dangers came upon her she was the bravest of the brave. My mother, though a young woman, was not strong and had been It was what might be called a two-story wagon or "Pioneer palace car," attached to a regular immigrant train. Our wagons, or the "Reed wagons," as they were called, were all made to order and I can say without fear of contradiction that nothing like our family wagon ever started across the plains. So when I was told that we were going to California and would have to pass through a region peopled by Indians, you can imagine how I felt. I would coax her to tell me more about her aunt, and would sit listening to the recital of the fearful deeds of the savages, until it seemed to me that everything in the room, from the high old-fashioned bed-posts down even to the shovel and tongs in the chimney corner, was transformed into the dusky tribe in paint and feathers, all ready for the war dance. I was fond of these stories and evening after evening would go into grandma's room, sitting with my back close against the wall so that no warrior could slip behind me with a tomahawk. She had an aunt who had been taken prisoner by the savages in the early settlement of Virginia and Kentucky and had remained a captive in their hands five years before she made her escape. In the long winter evenings Grandma Keyes used to tell me Indian stories. Reed, was the originator of the party, and the Donner brothers, George and Jacob, who lived just a little way out of Springfield, decided to join him.Īll the previous winter we were preparing for the journey – and right here let me say that we suffered vastly more from fear of the Indians before starting than we did on the plains at least this was my case. That spring morning of 1846 have since been known in history as the "Ill-fated Donner party" of "Martyr Pioneers." WAS a child when we started to California, yet I remember the journey well and I have cause to remember it, as our little band of emigrants who drove out of HILL.ĪCROSS THE PLAINS IN THE DONNER PARTY (1846).Ī PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF THE OVERLAND TRIP TO CALIFORNIA. "A PIONEER PALACE CAR." ADAPTED FROM A SKETCH BY A. A Celebration of Women Writers Across the Plains in the Donner Party:Ī Personal Narrative of the Overland Trip to California.Īs printed in The Century Magazine, Volume 42, 1891, pp.
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