From best information…but few persons will emigrate to California or Oregon this year. This time last year our town literally was crowded, but now very few are in the place.—St. Joseph, Missouri, Gazette, March 26, 1851.1
The first volume of Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1890, dealt with the records of women traveling overland during the 1840s. The second volume contained the diaries and letters of those who went west in 1850.
The real news of wagon travel to the far west in 1851 is found in the quote from the St. Joseph Gazette above. On June 6 the report of emigrant trains passing Ft. Kearny indicated that up to that date only 837 wagons had passed with 1,156 men, 928 women, 799 children, 5,975 oxen, cows, horses and mules.2
The most reliable modern study of numbers on the trails, that of John D. Unruh, Jr., in The Plains Across, indicates that the number of emigrants to California dropped from 44,000 in 1850 to 1,100 in 1851, a staggering decrease. Those to Oregon fell not so radically from some 6,000 in 1850 to 3,600 in 1851. The number of Mormons going to Utah dropped from 2,500 in 1850 to 1,500 in 1851.3
When one considers that the male-female relationship of those going to California was generally nine men to one woman, it is easy to see why there is a dearth of women’s records for the California Trail.4 In fact, so far we have found none for publication. The six to four female ratio in the Oregon emigration means that there would have been about 2160 men to 1440 women—a family migration, as was the case with Utah.
Why was there such a drop-off in California emigration in the 1851 overland season? George R. Stewart in his study of The California Trail5 suggested that there were three reasons:
1. The reports of hardships of ’50 discouraged migration. This would include disease, especially cholera,6 with one count of 963 graves, as well as the incredible loss of cattle and wagons on the desert crossings.
2. The hysteria of the gold rush could not be maintained. Everybody did not get rich overnight. There were returned stony-broke ’49ers in many eastern towns, and they were reported in the newspapers.
3. The new federal donation land law for Oregon by which for the year 1851, each man and wife could settle on a full section of land diverted no fewer than 2,000 overlanders from California to the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Those who came after 1851 and through 1853 were to obtain a donation half as large.7
The next year, 1852, there would be another amazing reverse in overland numbers again as the trails were once more inundated with people, mainly going to California, but many also to the Pacific Northwest and to Utah. That year, 1852, would be a golden one for women’s diaries and letters, so many that our volume IV will deal only with the travelers to California, and volume V with those going to the Pacific Northwest. More overlanders reached the western destinations in the 1852 migration than in any of the preceding years.
So we publish the diaries and/or letters of six Oregon-bound women in 1851 and one delightful journal of an English Mormon woman, who kept a diary all the way from the Old Country to Salt Lake City. We do finish with one dynamic paragraph from a published letter written by a California woman, probably in 1851, which appeared in an eastern publication in June of 1852.
The 1851 diaries and letters are arranged here in chronological order, from the date they crossed the Missouri river. This was the mental beginning of the journey for most of them. The dates for the Missouri crossing for our 1851 women are as follows: Harriet Buckingham, May 4; Amelia Hadley, May 6; Susan Cranston, May 8; Lucia Williams, May 13; Elizabeth Wood and Eugenia Zieber, late May; Jane Rio Baker, July 5.
For those readers who have not read our introduction to the series in volume one, a reiteration of a few salient points which guide our editorial hand are in order. It is our purpose to let the diarists and correspondents tell their own story in their own words, with as little scholarly trimming as possible. The intent is to transcribe each word or phrase as accurately as possible, leaving as written whatever mis-spellings or grammatical errors are found. The only gestures we have made for the sake of the reader have been as follows:
1. We have added space where phrases or sentences ended and no punctuation was to be found in the original.
2. We have put the daily journals into diary format even though the original may have been written continuously line by line because of the original writer’s shortage of paper.
Many geographic references are mentioned over and over again in the various accounts. The final volume in the series will include a gazetteer, in addition to the index and bibliography to aid the reader.
We have sought out the scarce and unusual in overland documents. Readily available accounts are not included, but will be referenced in the final volume in the bibliography. If you know of a special account written at the time of the journey, please let us know. Our goal is to add to the knowledge of all regarding this portion of our history—the story of ordinary people embarked on an extraordinary experience.
KENNETH L. HOLMES
Monmouth, Oregon, 1983