A Military Wife on the Santa Fe Trail

Anna Maria Morris

INTRODUCTION

No ordinary journal is this of Anna Maria De Camp, wife of Major Gouverneur Morris, United States Army. This was not a middle-class American family going west for freedom or farm or fortune. Husband and wife were representatives of two of New York's great pioneer families from the colonial days. She was traveling as wife of the commander of a military unit, and was consequently given all the attention and care that such a position demanded while she recorded her daily diary observations.

When F. X. Aubry, the Santa Fe trader and entrepreneur, encountered the Morrises while returning eastward along the trail, he wrote the following in his own diary on June 22, 1850: “[I met] Majors Morris and Graham Capt. Easton and several other officers and their families, also 100 recruits for the Third U. S. infantry.”1 Here was a unit of the frontier army traveling on foot, by horseback and wagon train in a follow-up to the Mexican War as they wended their way along the trail to Santa Fe, where they would be stationed for several years.

The key phrase in Aubry's quote is “and their families,” for those were the days when commissioned officers were allowed to take wives and children to the forts and garrisons where they would be stationed as part of the defence of the western frontier.

Anna Maria Morris was one of these women. She was 36 years old, having been born in Morristown, New Jersey, on November 25, 1813.2 She mentions her birthday each year in her diary but never once gives her age. Anna Maria was the daughter of Surgeon Major Grandin Johnston De Camp of the United States Army and of Nancy (Wood) De Camp.3 The De Camps were descended from the New Amsterdam family of de Kamp. The fact that they were living in Morristown, New Jersey, at the time of Anna Maria's birth tells us that there had probably been a relationship between the De Camp and the Morris family for many years. The Morris family had included Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Gouverneur Morris, one of the important writers of the United States Constitution. Their grand estate was Morrisania, a sprawling country place just north of the Harlem River in what is now a well-known part of New York City.

In 1670 Captain Richard Morris, a Welshman who had served in Cromwell's army, and his brother, Colonel Lewis Morris, had purchased a property then called Bronxland, five hundred acres in extent, on the north side of the Harlem River. Their lands quickly grew by nearly 2,000 acres. In addition to this Lewis Morris became the proprietor of extensive lands in New Jersey Province. The name is associated in New Jersey with Morris County and the historic city of Morristown.4

In his 1866 book The Hudson From the Wilderness to the Sea, Benson J. Lossing described the approach to and the locale of the “Morris House":

 

A broad, macadamized avenue, called the “Kingsbridge Road,” leads from the upper end of York Island to Manhattanville, where it connects with and is continued by the “Bloomingdale Road,” in the direction of the city. The drive over this road is very agreeable. The winding avenue passes through a narrow valley, part of the way between rugged hills, only partially divested of the forest, and ascends to the south-eastern slope of Mount Washington (the highest land on the island), on which stands the village of Carmansville. At the upper end of this village, on the high rocky bank of the Harlem River, is a fine old mansion, known as the “Morris House,” ... The mansion is One Hundred and Sixty-ninth Street. It is surrounded by highly ornamented grounds, and its situation is one of the most desirable on the island.5

 

Gouverneur Morris, Anna Maria's husband, was raised in this aristocratic setting. He was the son of another military man, Lieutenant William Walton Morris (1760-1832) and of Sarah Carpenter.6 In the same generation as this pair of overlanders were numerous Morrises and De Camps who were associated with the military.

Anna Maria's husband had been born about 1804 at Morrisania, so he was 46-years-old in 1850.7 His military career is summed up officially as follows in Hamersly's Army Register:8

MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR, 2nd Lieut. 4th Infantry, 24 May, 1824. 1st Lieut. 31 April, 1831. Captain, 6 September, 1837. Major 3rd Infantry, 31 Jan. 1850. Lieut. Colonel 1st Infantry, 31 May, 1857. Retired 9 Sept. 1861. Died 18 Oct., 1868. Brevet Rank: Brevet Major, 9 May, 1845, for gallant and meritorious conduct at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma [Mexican War].

So Anna Maria Morris traveled in style across the Plains in 1850 as the commanding officer's wife. She had a maid, Louisa, whose last name is never mentioned. Anna Maria often rode in the unit's ambulance wagon. She never cooked a meal nor did a wash -there were laundresses for that.9 As was stated at the outset, “This was not a middle-class American family going west for freedom or farm or fortune. “ Yet, for that very reason the journal is of intense value as a record of a different type of experience on the overland journey.

What must the average infantry soldier have felt about the whole matter of officer's wives and families accompanying them to the far-western frontier forts. Oliver Knight's fine book titled Life and Manners in the Frontier Army, dealing with the post-Civil War period, goes into the entire subject with great and fascinating detail. What he says about a later time often held true for the 1850's as well.10 The very best quote that we have found showing the feelings of the enlisted men toward the subject is to be found in A. Frank Mulford's Fighting Indians in the 7th U. S. Cavalry. It was published in 1878.

Here we find the greatest bother that there was ever in a camp with a regiment. General Sturges' two daughters and small son have been riding in one of the ambulances all day, and now “are so tired they don't know what to do.”

It is really too bad to have them get tired. But do you suppose they ever think men are tired?

I think not, at least they have a special wall tent put up for their special benefit, wood and water carried, and their supper cooked by the men who are detailed for head quarter fatigue (work).

All that there is any need of saying in this case is that woman is humbug in a cavalry camp.

May 5th, they, that is the ladies, left us this morning, to return to Fort A. Lincoln, and pass the summer in doing nothing but giving orders to the men.11

 

Anna Maria and Gouverneur Morris remained stationed in the Santa Fe area from July 11, 1850, till they were sent east in 1853. The return journey began on June 30 of that year. They reached St. Louis overland on July 30 and boarded “the cars” (the train) for New York and home on August 3. They reached Chicago on the 4th and Detroit on the 5th. There they boarded ship on Lake Erie for Buffalo. Then it was by train again to Albany and on to New York City and the sanctuary of the Morrisania estate on August 7th. There she continued to keep her diary, but generally with very short entries until the last one made on June I, 1858, Monday. She wrote of visits with friends, going to church, shopping in New York City, lives and illnesses and deaths of the family members.

She made a fascinating brief entry on March I, 1855, “at half past 4 Ocl: I gave birth to a fine little son The Lord be praised --” She never mentions the baby's name in the diary, but we know from a family genealogical record that he was Gouverneur Morris, b. I March 1855, d. 2 Feb. 1896, unmarried.12

Anna Maria would live on at Morrisania herself until at age fifty she died on May 6, 1861.13 Her husband lived on until his death on October 18, 1868.14

The Anna Maria Morris diary is in the Manuscripts Department of the University of Virginia Library (MSS #3448), and is published with their permission. We have been privileged with invariable graciousness by the office of the Curator of Manuscripts to have the use of a microfilm of this document.

 

1 Louise Barry, The Beginning of the West, 1540-1854, (Topeka, 1972), P. 947.

2 Elizabeth Morris Lefferts, comp., Descendants of Lewis Morris of Morrisania (New York, 1907), chart E II.

3 Notes accompanying manuscript of the diary, from the Univ. of Virginia Lby., Charlottesville.

4 W. W. Spooner, “The Morris Family of Morrisania,” American Historical Mag., I, no. I, pp. 25-44

5 (Troy, New York, 1866), p. 371-73.

6 Notes accompanying manuscript of the diary, from the Univ. of Virginia Lby., Charlottesville.

7 Lefferts, chart E II.

8 Thomas H. S. Hamersly, Complete Regular Army Register of the United States: For One Hundred Years, (1779-1879) (Washington, D.C., 1880), p.649.

9 Oliver Knight, Life and Manners in the Frontier Army (Norman, Okla., 1978), pp. 68-69.

10 Ibid.

11 (Corning, N. Y., 1878), pp. 47-48.

12 Lefferts, chart E. II.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid., also Hamersly, p. 649.