Carylin' on the Oregon/California Trail ~ Day Two

On Day Two (Monday, December17th) of our great adventure, we woke up in Saint Joseph, Missouri! I’d never really even heard of St. Jo before the year before when I joined the Lockets and Lace Collection series written by the Sweet Americana Sweethearts Bloggers. In its planning, our leader Zina Abbott (AKA Robin Echols) informed the majority of the ladies chose the historical city for the location of the Bavarian jeweler’s shop where the beautiful lockets that would be the connection that ran through our stories were created.

The first thing I wanted to do was go find the jewelry shop 😊 Of course, it was fictitious, but I messaged Robin asking her for the address, hoping to give her a little smile! In my 2019 Lockets and Lace story UNIQUELY COMMON, they lined the covered wagons up on Francis Street waiting their turn to get on the ferry and the other side of the Missouri River. So we went looking for that very street!

On the way, we passed the statue of the Pony Express carrier which St. Jo is also known for, but that came after 1853 when my story takes place. We were not only able to find the historical street, but we followed it right down to the river just as our characters—and thousands upon thousands—did so long ago. They would wait sometimes for weeks in line for their turn. Imagine how messy the streets must have gotten. Port oxen, poor people!

You can still see how the far bank had been contoured to dock the huge ferry that would carry up to ten wagons with the oxen still hooked up to pull it on and off the ferry! Each Spring thousands of folks with a dream for a new life descended on the town of St. Jo and camped all around the hills and meadows.

This is where they would find a wagon master they trusted and join his train. Trains usually consisted of from ten to fifty wagons.

Some were going to Oregon, some to California, and others headed to Utah, but all were waiting for the prairie grasses to start growing, indicating the time had come to hit the trail.

Each year, there was only a short window for everyone wanting to go west to leave. They couldn’t go before the grasses started growing because their stock needed food, and to wait too late to leave meant risking not getting over the mountains before the winter storms set in.

The Donner Party gained great fame because they ended up eating their dead, but they were not the only ones who died in the snow and icy mountains short of their destination. The Donners only missed it by a week. Time was critical.

Ron and I planned to drive the two hundred sixty-seven miles to Fort Kearny in a few hours; it took those pioneers almost three weeks to travel to the fort in Nebraska, their first destination. It wasn’t ‘Nebraska’ back then though. When the settlers crossed the Missouri River, they were no longer in the United States, but the wild, unsettled west.

I tried to imagine how they felt. They had to be so excited to be going, They’d made the decision, planned, saved, in most cases invested their life savings. And though I’m sure they knew the trip would be hard, how could they begin to imagine the troubles and hardships they’d face? And once on the trail, there was no turning back.

The topography between Saint Jo and Fort Kearny wasn’t too hard with its gently rolling hills. The animals and people were fresh, so the first three weeks weren’t so awful.

I’m sure they were thinking, ‘We can do this.’ On reaching Fort Kearny, they’d only put about fifteen percent of their two-thousand-mile trip behind them.

The grazing around the Fort was plentiful and the Platte River’s water, sweet. It was at Fort Kearny that the settlers picked up and started traveling parallel to the Platte River.

All the trains traveled alongside the rivers, and it was the Platte and North Platter that took them a long way, providing water for the animals and pioneers on the trail. 

In those days, the government was interested in emigrants settling the west. Their goal was for the “Manifest Destiny” to come to fruition, for the United States to stretch from sea to shining sea! So, they built the forts to help them on their way. The pioneers could rest a few days there, restock, make repairs.

The forts purposes weren’t really what I’d thought from all the ‘Old West’ movies and TV programs, and not all of them even had walls like we envision. Fort Kearny had a collection of buildings that expanded to as many as thirty in its latter years. Television would have us believe Indians were a constant threat.

But in fact, the red men were friendly to the travelers and helped them. There’d be as many teepees camped around the forts as prairie schooners to trade. Some traded their animals for fresh ones, expendable household goods for food, trinkets like mirrors or hairbrushes for tools.

The natives knew the covered wagons were only traveling through and posed them no threat. It was in the later years, after the hundreds and thousands of settlers littered the pristine lands and started stopping and settling their lands in the mid and late 1860s that attacks became common on the trails.

Fort Kearny was built in 1845, the year after the first wagon train headed west, served twenty-three years as a U.S. Army fort, and was never attacked. It was the eastern anchor of the Great Platte River Road (a portion of the Oregon/California Trial) and an important waystation for military and travelers. They could send or receive mail there.

In the 1850s, when the most pioneers migrated as many as two thousand emigrants and ten thousand oxen passed through Fort Kearney in a day during late May, the height of the season.

Next destination Ash Hollow! Plus lots more on Day Three!

BIO: Award-winning Author Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory! And her best-selling novels are blessed with a lion’s share of 5-Star ratings! With forty-three-and-counting titles, she loves writing as well as singing the new songs the Lord gives her—listen to a few at YouTube. She celebrated fifty years of marriage to Ron in 2018, and the couple shares four children and eighteen grandsugars. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County, in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door. 

Contact Caryl: Amazon   BookBub   Website   Facebook   Twitter   Google+ 

Be watching for UNIQUELY COMMON, Caryl's 2019 Lockets and Lace title launching in April and REMI, her May release that picks up where UNIQUELY COMMON leaves off . . . same characters, different love story. :) SAVE THE DATES for Cover Reaveal Parties! February 21st for REMI, and the authors of the Prairie Roses Collection! And March 4th for UNIQUELY COMMON and all the new 2019 Lockets and Lace titles!     
           

Carylin' on the Oregon Trail - Day One, Saint Joseph, Missouri

It was a Wednesday, December 12th, and my husband asked me, “You want to go drive the Oregon Trail?”
I responded, “Sure. When?”
“Thought we’d leave Sunday.”

And so we did! Our only itinerary being we’d start at Saint Joseph in Missouri. That’s where the Bavarian Jewelry Shop is where all our “Lockets and Lace Collection” characters get their lockets, the commonality of the Sweet Americana Sweethearts’ collection stories. I messaged our Lockets and Lace organizer, Zina Abbott for the address so I could stop in.

The morning we left, God gave us a magnificent sunrise! The shadow building is our barn at The Peaceable where we live back in the woods south of Clarksville, Texas.


So Day One—Sunday, December 16—was a long drive, just over six hundred miles to get us from Clarksville to St. Jo. We left about 7:30 a.m. then arrived around 6 p.m., making several stretch stops including lunch and gasoline. We woke up fresh on Monday morning in Saint Joseph, Missouri.

We both thoroughly enjoyed the city that celebrates its historical relevance—the town where so many of the “Trails” converged to ferry across the Missouri River! Pony Express, too, though that isn't my story here. Literally, thousands of westward-bound sojourners would descend into the most western area of the then United States, camping all around with their families, all their possessions packed into covered wagons, and their oxen and mules to care for.

They’d arrive in the Spring and would wait there, stocking their wagons with tools and foodstuffs, finding a captain or wagon master to lead them, and join a ‘wagon train’.

The captain might have ten to fifty wagons total, and he’d charge by the person, upwards to ten dollars each—half a month’s wages. A family of four would be forty dollars, two month’s wages. He’d have a list of rules and required supplies.



The best ones had successfully made the journey in prior years and might charge more. It usually took a family’s life savings to go west and claim their piece of free land.

The wagon could run two-to-four hundred dollars, depending on new or used. The prairie schooners were the most suited, while the heavier, larger Conestoga wagons were more expensive and proved harder to pull.

Oxen—bulls castrated after reaching full growth—were cheaper and considered better than mules or horses for their strength and ability to survive on poorer grass and less water. Mules were more sure-footed and could go faster, but cost double. A thousand-mile trip or less might prefer mules, but for the long haul, oxen were best.

There were also provisions necessary to buy. Six hundred pounds combined of flour, meal, salt pork, lard, and coffee—sugar was a great luxury. For meat, they would hunt and fish on the trail. They needed tools to keep their wagons repaired, and cooking utensils, chains and rope, extra clothes, and firearms. And all that cost more the closer to Saint Jo they got.

Many, many trains would be waiting to leave, but each only made one trip each year, leaving in the Spring and doing everything in their power to arrive before the winter storms.

Then came the wait. They wouldn’t leave until the prairie grasses started growing tall and nutritious for the stock. We drove down Francis Street to the Missouri River and saw the place where the bank on the far side had been shaped to handle the ferry’s offloading. The barge might hold five wagons at a time.

When the grasses grew, the thousands of pioneers would line up to get across and choke the streets of Saint Joseph for a couple of months until the last ones to leave could be ferried across. They might wait three weeks in the line for the ferry, and it would work from dawn to dusk to move thousands of wagons and families and dreams across the river.

When the emigrants landed on the far bank, they were no longer in the United States or under its protection. They would regroup with their chosen captains, and their journeys would begin at a pace of twelve to fifteen miles average a day.

Their first destination, Fort Kearny, Nebraska.

Caryl's January release: TEXAS MY TEXAS, book two in the new Cross Timbers Romance Family Saga. Available now for Pre-order! Launch date January 12th!

Watch for the Stories coming in 2019 to benefit from this awesome journey:
APRIL release: Lockets and Lace Collection, book three UNIQUELY COMMON
MAY release: Prairie Roses Collection, book one REMI
JULY release: Gold Diggers Collection, book one A THOUSAND SUNSETS



BIO:  Award-winning Author Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory which is what she lives to do. Her best-selling novels entertain readers around the world who shower them with 5-Star ratings! With forty-and-counting titles, she loves writing as well as singing the new songs the Lord gives her—listen to a few at YouTube. She celebrated fifty years of marriage to Ron in June 2018 and shares four children and eighteen grandsugars with him. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County, in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door.

Website   Amazon   BookBub   FaceBook   The Caryler's Group (join supporters!)

Blog Tour Tuesday: Walk the Promise Road: A Novel of the Oregon Trail

This week's Blog Tour Tuesday features 

Walk the Promise Road: A Novel of the Oregon Trail 

by Anne Schroeder

About Walk the Promise Road: A Novel of the Oregon Trail 

Mary Rodgers has lost everything—or so she believes. Her entire family has been struck down with influenza, leaving her alone in the world—except for her cousin Philip. But Philip is bound for Oregon to meet up with Laurel, his fiancée, who’s waiting for him. Though Mary begs him to take her with him on the Oregon Trail, he resists. What would people think?

Mary’s plan is simple. They already share a last name. They will pose as husband and wife. The wagonmaster is a firm man—and if he finds out the truth, he’ll force them to marry, dashing Philip’s dreams of a life with Laurel. But Mary promises it will be their secret, and Philip can’t leave her behind after all she’s lost.

When Luke Sayer, their half-Indian trail scout, begins to spend evenings at their fireside, other travelers notice the obvious mutual attraction between him and Mary. Though Mary denies it, she struggles to keep her promise without bringing harm to either her dear cousin, Philip, who has risked everything for her—or to Luke, the love of her life.

Mary's grit and determination will see her through the hardships and sorrows she encounters, but Luke’s love will give her hope for the future as they WALK THE PROMISE ROAD…

“With exquisite details of wagon trains, women and the West, Anne Schroeder takes us on an authentic journey of love and hope giving us characters to cheer for and moments of meaning to cherish.” — Jane Kirkpatrick, Award-winning author of ALL SHE LEFT BEHIND.

"The most accurate novel I've ever read on the Trail." — Michael Smith, Oregon Trail Preservation Committee.

EXCERPT:

    MARY SAW A familiar dun horse approaching. The sight of the tall stallion seemed to quicken her blood, but she dismissed the idea as merely anticipation of riding astride in-stead of the bone-jarring pace set by clumsy oxen that moved with the grace of pigs.

     “Morning, ma’am. Ready for that ride?” Luke formed a slow smile that made Mary forget his question. His shirt was not the familiar red flannel of the other men, but a dusky cream doeskin, fringed at the arms and laced up the front with rawhide cords. He seemed dif-ferent today, rugged and dangerous in a way that she couldn’t define, but he looked as if he lived in the type of garb he was wearing; hadn’t chosen it to enhance his mascu-linity, but rather the other way around.

     “Ready and looking forward to it, Mr. Sayer.” She felt suddenly shy in his company and found herself studying his moccasins where they rested in his stirrups.

     Her formality brought a chuckle. “Better get used to calling me Luke. Everyone else will by the time the trip is through.”

     “I’m not sure I should do that, Mr. Sayer. My mother would heartily disapprove.” Her smile belied her words.

To purchase Walk the Promise Road: A Novel of the Oregon Trail in either paperback or ebook, please CLICK HERE.

About Anne Schroeder:

Anne Schroeder describes herself as a calorically-challenged Aphrodite with an unmistakable fervor for life. Second of seven children, she was born in Ventura County, California, the subject of her first memoir, BRANCHES ON THE CONEJO: Leaving the Soil after Five Generations.

In 1971 she graduated from Cal Poly, SLO, in the first wave of the Social and Sexual Revolution with a degree in Social Science, a husband, toddler and part-time job. Her memoir ORDINARY APHRODITE is an adventure tale about a life of small steps in the Boomer women's experience. Her fiction and memoir have won numerous awards.

She served as 2015 President of Women Writing the West, 2016 WILLA Literary Competition Chair and is a member of Western Writers of America.

Connect with Anne Schroeder:

Blog ~ Facebook ~ Goodreads ~ Amazon Author Page

5 Little Known Facts About the Wagon Trains Along The Oregon Trail

As a child, I was fascinated by stories of Indians, wagon trains, cowgirls and cowboys— and although I'm fairly certain I've never admitted this to anyone before— I used to daydream about living on a ranch in the Wild West back in the days when life was more simple. Mind you, this was likely inspired by the fact that I loved horses and as a teenager could not imagine anything more wonderful than spending all day, every day riding horses! But I digress...

As authors, we often spend copious hours researching topics and period details before we put our first word down on paper. This was the case with a recent book that I wrote for a collaboration with two author friends, one of whom is part of our own Sweet Americana Sweethearts group, Annie Boone!

The particular story, Emma's Epiphany, required research on wagon trains, and I found myself more than a little surprised by some of the facts uncovered during the research phase of this book.

Photo taken in 2016, Oregon Trail

Fact #1: Did you know that pioneer wheel ruts from the original wagons can still be seen in various places throughout the Oregon Trail?  They can!  In fact, they can be seen in all six states that once encompassed the trail. This came as a complete surprise to me. In fact, if you have visited the trail, or were aware of this fact, please let us know in the comments below.

Fact #2: The Oregon Trail wasn't a single set path that every wagon followed, for several reasons. In some cases the emigrants realized food and game would be more scarce if everyone followed one another, so they often spread out over several hundred miles for this very reason. As time progressed, people began to spread the word about new routes and ways the wagon trains could save time by using a certain cut offs, etc., yet enough traveled the same paths that we still have the ruts from the wagon trains heading west in the mid-1800's.

Fact #3:  The large conestoga wagon was not the typical wagon used by most people heading west because it was too large and unwieldy to be manageable across the rough and challenging trail; rather, most people used a wagon known as the prairie schooner, so-named because the canvas covers resembled the "sail" of a ship.

Fact #4: Most deaths along the trail were caused by illness, not by attacks by Indians, as was often depicted in Hollywood Westerns and dramatizations.  The wagons typically formed a circle at night largely to keep the animals from wandering off, and many Native American Indians served as trading partners and guides at various points along the trail.  After the beginning of the Civil War, there were more attacks than there had been, but overall historians estimate that only 400 deaths out of over 20,000 were caused by conflicts with Indians.

Fact #5: Although the first major wagon train took place in 1843, it wasn't until 1849 that an actual guide was published that fully described the journey over land to California. Truthfully, I hadn't given the fact that a "map" didn't exist for several years after the wagon trains began much consideration prior to my research, and it was a big surprising that it took five years for it to happen. Yet in defense, it took an average of five months for people to make the trek along the trail, and as you can imagine, the first few trips likely took much longer than that. They were true pioneers!

Researching these facts took a little bit of the "romance" out of the way I had always imagined the wagon trains traveled back in those days, and what that may have looked like, yet in all honesty, those Hollywood Westerns and images are indelible on my mind. At the end of the day, a visual image can often be more powerful than an imagined one.

I hope you enjoyed these facts about the Oregon Trail and the wagon trains that paved the way for settlers in the west.

Warmly,
Kate

*****

Kate Cambridge is a bestselling Amazon author, wife, and mother who writes sweet historical and sweet contemporary romance with happily ever after or happy for now endings. She is a hopeless romantic, strong supporter of women's rights, and loves to write stories that inspire, characters who seem real long after "the end", and always with a thread of faith, hope and love.

Connect with Kate on Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or on her website at KateCambridge.com


#KateCambridge #historicalwesternromance #suffragettes #suffragetteseries #sweetromance

Blog Tour Tuesday:

Today's Blog Tour Tuesday features

Rekindled Love

by Susan Leigh Carlton

About the book:

An Oregon Trail Romance

Caroline and Ben grew up together, shared a desk in their one-room school, shared a first love, and shared their first kiss.

‘At fifteen, Ben’s family sold their farm and joined a caravan on the Oregon Trail.

Separated by half a continent, Caroline and Ben both grew up and moved on, marrying, having children and losing their spouses. They meet again years later through the mail and find that initial spark rekindled, can they get past their grief and find each other, and happiness together?

Excerpt:

    Caroline and Ben, 1852…
    “Your pa sold the farm?” a stunned Caroline asked. “Where are you going to live?”
     “We’re going to Oregon,” Ben said. “We’ve already bought a wagon. We have to leave pretty soon so we can get through the mountains before winter.”
      “But school won’t be out by then; you’ll miss the rest of the year.”
      “I know; I hate that part of it.”
    “Why did your pa decide to leave?” she asked.
    “Brown spot has ruined our crops for the past two years. Pa says he’s had enough of that and the hard winters here. There’s two other wagons from around here we’ll join up with when we leave. It’s likely we’ll get in with others later.”
    Always full of questions, Caroline asked, “How will you know the way?”
    “Pa said we’ll just follow along with the others from here, and join up with a real train in Indianapolis, and go to Missouri, and then get on with a big wagon train on the Oregon Trail.”
    “It sounds kind of scary to me,” Caroline said. “That’s a long way to go and you don’t know what’s waiting on the way or at the other end.”
    “I’m not scared; there’ll be a lot of people with us. When we get there, we’ll have land to build a house. Besides, they give every family six hundred forty acres, and anyone over eighteen can get one hundred and sixty acres so in three years, I can have my own farm. This is my big chance to get started.”
    “I’m going to miss you, Ben. You’ve always been my best friend. We’ll probably never see each other again. That’s going to be hard. I sort of thought I would be your wife someday.”
    “I thought so too,” he replied.
    “Goodbye Ben.” She rose to her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek, and then joined her parents.

You may purchase Rekindled Love by CLICKING HERE.

About Susan Leigh Carlton:

    Susan Leigh Carlton lives just outside Tomball, Texas, a suburb twenty-six miles northwest of Houston. She began writing and publishing on Amazon in August of 2012.   
    Susan will observe the eighty-second anniversary of her birth on April 17th. She says, “I quit having birthdays, because they are depressing.” Susan and her husband will celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary on April 16th, 2016, the day before her birthday.
    Susan has said many times, “One of the joys I get from writing is the emails I receive from readers that have read and liked my books. I even like the letters that are critical of the writing because it means the writer cared enough to take the time to write."

Connect with Susan on her website by CLICKING HERE. 

 

Please CLICK HERE to tweet this blog post:

Separated by half a continent, their love rekindled with

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