Race for the 100th Meridian on the Platte River by Zina Abbott

In 2019, I did a multi-month series of blog posts across several blogs about the first transcontinental railroad. Much to my surprise, I recently learned some information about the 1862 Railway Act of which I was unaware. Because the Union Pacific Rail Road was the ultimate winner of the race toward the 100th Meridian on the Platte River – the point where the eastern portion of the Transcontinental Road began – it was only this past week I realized there had been another contender.

 

Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railway depot at Miltonvale, Kansas

The railroad with its roots in Kansas was a federally chartered railroad, backed with government land grants. It began in 1855 as the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad, and was later reorganized in 1863 as the Union Pacific, Eastern Division. 

 

Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division headquarters in Wyandotte, Kansas

The UP Eastern was authorized by the United States Congress as part of the Pacific Railway Act, in order to create, alongside the Union Pacific, a second southerly branch of the transcontinental railroad. The name "Kansas Pacific" was not adopted until 1869. The original intent of the railroad was to build a line west from Kansas City, Kansas across Kansas to Fort Riley, then north to join the Union Pacific main line at Fort Kearny in Nebraska. The construction of the line was motivated in part by the desire of the U.S. government to extend transportation routes into Kansas, which had been the scene of ongoing conflict between Union and Confederate sympathizers even prior to the start of the American Civil War.

As early as 1861 the territorial legislature of Kansas had chartered no fewer than 51 railroads. Practically see all of them were just that – charters. 

Samuel Hallett

On July 1, 1862, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific were authorized, and expectations of rail travel began to escalate. Not much was accomplished to make it a reality until two men, Samuel Hallett and John C Fremont, acquired controlling stock in the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad Company at the end of May 1863.

Hallett was a young banker with offices in New York City. He helped build the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad in the east. Fremont was the big name in exploration in early Kansas and had made a great deal of money from the sale of his ranch in California. Fremont was elected president of the new company and Hallett the general superintendent. The name of their rail company was changed to the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division.

John C. Fremont

Although creating competition between rail lines might not have been intentional, the law of July 1862 brought it about. This law, which established the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads, provided that the Union Pacific be built from the 100th Meridian Westward and the Central Pacific from the Pacific coast eastward. They were to meet at the California-Nevada state line. If either got there before the other, it was to build on until the lines were joined.

That provision left the strip of land between the 100th Meridian and the Missouri River without specific authorization. It was generally accepted that the first railroad to reach that 100th Meridian on the Platte River would get the contract to build on the rest of the railway to meet the Central Pacific.

Although the section between the Missouri River to the 100th Meridian was scheduled to be built west from Omaha, Fremont and Halleck felt confident that if their company reached the 100th Meridian first, they would get the contract for the balance of the job. Based on that, they named their company the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division. Their plan was to build west from the Missouri along the Kansas River, then turn up the Republican River. From there, they intended to continue northwest to Fort Kearney on the Platte River in Nebraska, then westward to the 100th Meridian. The railroad would cut right through the inhabited part of Kansas, and no one objected the tracks turning North into Nebraska. They were better organized than the railroad company at Omaha, they had the people of Kansas behind then, and they moved forward with confidence that they would win the race.

 

Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division depot at Wamego, Kansas

On July 2nd Congress pass an amendment to the railroad law granting the builders 12,800 acres of land on either side of the roadway for each mile of road built. This amendment also practically assured that the first railroad to get us rails to the 100th Meridian would get the right of way to build to meet the Central Pacific. No one in eastern Kansas had any doubts that Hallett would win the race easily he. He was far ahead of a line starting from the Omaha. Halleck moved to Wyandotte, Kansas and set up the company’s headquarters there.

The company soon ran into trouble. Fremont and Halleck sharply disagreed on several issues. When it came time for elections, there were two meetings of stockholders. At the meeting in the railroad company’s office, John D. Perry, president of the Exchange Bank in St. Louis, Missouri, was elected president. In the other meeting held at another site in town, Fremont was elected president. However, Halleck pointed out that the eligibility to hold office depended on the strength of the shares of stock held in the company. Four months before either election, the company had assessed a ten percent payment on all stock. None of those at the meeting that elected Fremont had paid their assessment, which rendered the vote for Fremont ineligible.  

 

The Seminole, a UPRWED engine

On July 27, 1864, Hallett was killed by Orlando Talcott who had been brought to the railroad construction work by Fremont. However, when Fremont lost out on spring election, Talcott lost his job. After Samuel Hallett’s death, his brother, John, took over the project. However, Hallett’s death and the process of settling his estate, including the lawsuit brought by John D. Perry for the shares he had been promised by Hallett as part of his accepting the position of president, put a damper on the project.

Delay after delay held up the work. Most of the work was being done on the bridge over the Kansas River and on the line that would reach from the Pacific Railroad of Missouri to the Union Pacific, Eastern Division. The war was absorbing both men and materials, preventing John Hallett from getting the rails or the men he needed to lay them. Another problem was a heavy investor in the project, Thomas Durant, who also had a larg interest in the Union Pacific Railroad running out of Omaha. He diverted most of the available material to that line. The Kansas newspapers that followed the progress of this project closely expressed relief when Durant’s representative, Silas Seymour, was dismissed from the work in Kansas.

It soon became apparent to the Kansas Branch of the Union Pacific that it was not going to reach Fort Kearny ahead of the Omaha branch. Perry, then president of the Kansas Branch proposed to make the best of a bad situation. He asked Congress for permission to build his railroad up the Smoky Hill River to Denver – basically following the route of the Butterfield Overland Despatch Stagecoach Company – rather than up the Republican River to meet Nebraska line at Fort Kearney. Part of his arguments included that the Smoky Hill Valley route was 134 miles closer to Denver then the Republican route would be plus it had other benefits. On July 1, 1865, Congress finally let a new contract for the line to go to Denver, Colorado.

That change pleased the residents and businesses of Denver to no end since it gave them a more direct line to the east. In 1869, the company adopted the name of Kansas Pacific Railway. Its main line furnished a principal transportation route that opened up settlement of the central Great Plains of Kansas and Colorado Territory between Kansas City and Denver.

The Kansas Pacific Railway was consolidated with the Union Pacific in 1880, and its main line continues to be an integral part of the Union Pacific network today.

Although I refer to stagecoach travel, particularly along the Smoky Hill Trail in all three of my novels in the Widows, Brides & Secret Babies series, in my third book, railroads play a role. In September of 1867, my heroine, Penelope, finally leaves Lawrence, Kansas to marry the man she met through correspondence. She is able to ride the train to the end of track which, at first, is Buffalo Springs, a stagecoach station which, in 1867, is run by Wells, Fargo & Company. The tracks soon arrive at Fort Hays where my hero is temporarily assigned. However, between the availability of the railroad, Penelope still travels by stagecoach. What an adventure!

Sources:

https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/railroads-in-kansas/15120

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_Pacific_Railway

Trails of the Smoky Hill by Wayne C. Lee and Howard C. Raynesford;

Caxton Press; Caldwell, Idaho: 2008

Freight Trains on the Plains

When we think of freight trains today, this is probably what comes to mind:

However, back in the 1800s, before the railroads crossed the Missouri River after the Civil War, a freight train looked more like this:

Notice two wagons hooked together-needed fewer bullwhackers or muleskinners that way.

Freight trains were pulled across the Great Plains for decades before railroads began transporting a large portion of trade goods between the East and either the Pacific Coast states of California and Oregon, or the Mexican-held Southwest. One of the earliest known cases of freight being taken across the territory claimed by Mexico, but dominated by the Plains tribes of Native Americans, was the first venture down the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 by Captain William Becknell.

 

Sante Fe trail's end outside W.J. Rowe Transfer Company

His party of traders left Arrow Rock, Missouri, to trade horses and mules with American Indians and hunt wild game on the plains. The expedition met a troop of Mexican soldiers in November and traveled with them to Santa Fe. Their trade goods, including calico and other printed cloth, sold at high prices in the isolated Spanish town. They returned to Missouri in 1822 after only 48 days of travel. Because of high profits, the trade route soon became a favorite with other traders—most of whom used freight wagons pulled by teams of either oxen or mules.

Ben Holladay became known as the stagecoach king. However, he got his start in freighting in 1846 during the Mexican-American War when he contracted with General Stephen W. Kearny to supply the U. S. Army with wagons and provisions. Once the war was over, he formed a partnership with Theodore W. Warner. They transported supplies to Salt Lake City, Utah.

One well-known shipping firm was Russell, Majors and Waddell which came into being to fill a need that none of the men individually had the means to do on their own. Until 1854 government freight contracts were awarded to various companies for relatively small shipments. That year the War Department offered a single, enormous two-year contract to transport supplies to U.S. Army posts in most of the West and Southwest. Majors owned a freight company at the time. Russell and Waddell were partners in a wholesale trading company. The three men joined forces on December 28, 1854, to form Russell, Majors and Waddell won the contract. They also competed for and won the next government contract, although that one did not prove so profitable.

As a side note, one of my pioneer families crossed the plains in a covered wagon which, with a few others, was attached to a Russell, Majors and Waddell freight train.

Along with all the larger freight companies were a multitude of smaller freighters to transport goods from one place to another.

Five of my books, starting with my 2020 Lockets & Lace novel, Hannah’s Handkerchief and ending with Hannah’s Highest Regard, touch on the Kansas trails (Smoky Hill and Santa Fe), the frontier forts, and either freight or passenger service along those trails and between those forts. 

The two books about Hannah involve a hero in the Army Quartermaster Corps who uses freight wagons to transport goods from Fort Riley, the supply center for forts farther west. Most freight was hauled by contract labor in freight trains usually pulled by oxen. (U.S. Army freight wagons, often used for delivering ordnance or transporting supplies on individual campaigns, were pulled by teams of six mules—always mules and always six of them.)

In my three books I’m writing for the Widows, Brides & Secret Babies series, Mail Order Roslyn, Mail Order Lorena, and Mail Order Penelope, I focus on the Butterfield Overland Despatch Stagecoach Company. 

Founder David Butterfield recognized the Smoky Hill Trail was the shortest and quickest route between Missouri and Denver, Colorado. He started a freight business at the same time he started the stagecoach line. His first freight train traveled that trail a few weeks before the stagecoach. To prepare for freight as well as stagecoach drivers and travelers along the trail, Butterfield built and stocked stations every ten to fifteen miles. Along with the home stations that served food and sometimes provided lodging, and the stock stations that only changed out teams, he built cattle stations. Cattle stations, in addition to being home stations for the coaches, allowed freighters to change out their tired oxen and, in some cases, mules for those freight trains traveling the trail. These cattle stations were past Fort Ellsworth (later Fort Harker) at Ruthton, Eaton, Cornell Creek, and Bijou Basin.

 

1890 Last large bull train from the railroad to the Black Hills

Even after the railroads came carrying freight to stations along it tracks, it still needed to be transported distances to the ultimate customer. Freight trains made of wagons pulled by oxen, mules, and horses continued to find business well into the twentieth century until motorized vehicles took over.

Sources:

https://kshs.org/kansapedia/santa-fe-trail/12195

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ben-holladay/

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-russellmajorswaddell/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Russell-Majors-and-Waddell

Traveling with a Nursing Baby by Zina Abbott

Traveling with a nursing baby.

Been there, done that. Sitting in a fairly private automobile with family who are used to seeing nurse the newest baby is not bad. However, even though my grandchildren think this took place in the dark ages, relatively, it was not so long ago.

How about women crossing the trail in a covered wagon? The nice thing about nursing a baby, the baby's food was easily portable. Almost all women did it, so it was no big thing to look through the dust or the rain behind or ahead of you and see a woman with her baby to her breast. Or, if a woman was particularly modest about the whole affair, she could climb in the back of the covered wagon and endure the bounce of the wooden wheels against the bumpy, rutted trail and the heat caused by the sun beating down on the canvas cover and feed her little one in privacy.

In my current book from the Widows, Brides & Secret Babies series, Mail Order Roslyn, I have a heroine who is a nursing mother. She travels by stagecoach, not in a private automobile or with the available privacy found with a family wagon in a wagon train. (Railroad travel in the coach section was not overly private, either.)

All of what I wrote regarding nursing a baby required no research on my part. Once again, I've been there, done that. Even though the "baby" of my six babies I breastfed is forty years old, I remember...

As part of the plot, Roslyn leaves her two-month-old baby behind with her cousin while she meets a prospective husband who wrote he did not want a wife who had children. Roslyn's aunt is the one who sets this marriage up, and ignores the small detail that Roslyn has a baby. The reasoning is, once her husband grows fond of her, of course, he'll allow her to send for her baby. Set in 1866, canned milk is available, Roslyn can leave little Emmy behind for a month, then send for her later. So, even though it means going through the misery of having her breasts dry up, her baby can be fed--or so she thinks. 

As soon as Roslyn Welsh closed the hotel room door behind her, she turned and flopped against it, using the hard surface to support her back. She pressed both forearms against her nipples to stop the flow of milk. She squeezed her eyes shut and bent over, willing the let-down sensation to stop. How long before my milk finally dries up? It’s already been two days. After several seconds, she stood up and brushed aside the once royal blue Zouave jacket her aunt had dyed black. She inspected the front of her shirtwaist and heaved a sigh of relief. No wet spots. The folded muslin pads she had stuffed into the front of her corset were holding. She poked the side of one breast with her forefinger. Rock hard. 

While she is in the process of meeting this man, Roslyn gets a big surprise.

          The words caught in her throat and her eyes widened as she heard the sound of a baby’s cry. Emmy? No, it could not be her baby, but her body did not know the difference. She could feel the milk in her breasts let down.

            Roslyn spun a quarter turn to face the street. Interlacing her fingers, she clasped her hands together as she brought them to her lips, hoping the movement hid her real purpose which was to press her forearms against her nipples to stop the flow of milk.

            Roslyn turned her head to the right to look in the direction from which the sound of the baby’s cries came.

            On the boardwalk the next block over, a woman dressed in black from the top of her bonnet to the bottom hem of her skirt approached with a quick walk.

            Roslyn would know that silhouette anywhere. In her arms, Penelope, five months pregnant with her own child, held an infant wrapped in a familiar-looking, white knit blanket. What are they doing here? Panic surged up within her. Penelope is going to ruin everything. Without concern for what any of the men standing in front of the hotel saw or thought, Roslyn bounded off the side of the boardwalk into the cross-street as she ran toward her cousin and daughter.

            While Roslyn was still in the middle of the road, Penelope called out to her.

            “Roslyn, you need to take your baby. Emmy needs you.”

          Roslyn felt her entire body stiffen, and a surge of anger welled up within her. She cared not a whit if people in town witnessed her face red with annoyance. As Penelope joined her and she reached for her baby, she leaned forward and hissed at her cousin. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to wait a month for me to let you know it was all right to bring her to me.”

            ... “I had to bring her, Roslyn. Emmy isn’t eating well at all, and she cries all the time. The canned milk doesn’t agree with her.”

The way I was originally taught to breastfeed, at least in the daytime when I was not lying on my side in the bed, was to unbutton my blouse or dress from the top and breastfeed with what I always called the "let it all hang out" method.

 

By about the second or third child, I learned it was easier and a lot more modest to either wear a knit shirt or unbutton the blouse from the bottom. By keeping my upper body covered, and positioning the clothing hem just above the baby's mouth on my nipple, the baby's head hid my breast from view and baby's body covered my otherwise exposed midriff.

Once again, public transportation is not a private place, but when a nursing mother is traveling with baby, and baby is hungry, baby doesn't care about mother's modesty concerns. 

Later in my book, I have Roslyn in a tense, busy situation during a short stop at a stagecoach station at the same time Emmy wants to be fed. At times like that, a mother will put the needs of her baby first, no matter what. Here's a snippet from a scene I had fun writing:

            Hugging her tight against her chest, Roslyn climbed inside the coach. The only passenger remaining there was the soldier injured at the station. His eyes widened as Roslyn untied her fabric belt and tugged up the tail of her shirt. “Soldier, if you’ve never seen a woman nurse a baby before, you’re about to get an education. This child can’t wait any longer.” She reached beneath the shirt and loosened the camisole, then she positioned Emmy so she could latch on. She knew Emmy’s head and body blocked her breast so she was not exposed, but there was no disguising the nasal nursing noises.

Ah, yes, the nasal, snorting, gasping nursing noises. Many a nursing mother intent upon being discreet, will  position her clothing to keep herself covered and toss a blanket over her shoulder as if keeping the light out of a sleeping baby's eyes.  She may think she is disguising that she is breastfeeding the baby. Then, everyone around her stops talking. At that point, the noises a baby makes when it is nursing fills the room. It becomes very obvious to everyone what is going on. (Like I said--been there, done that.)

Back in the day, breastfeeding a child was the best option for keeping a baby alive and healthy. If a woman was unable (or unwilling) to breastfeed her own, she needed to find a wet nurse who could feed her child for her. Goat's milk or the milk of other animals might be an alternative. (Cow's milk was too hard for most younger babies to digest well).

Regardless of the practical and health aspects of nursing a baby, after having done so with my own six, I know there are other benefits. The closeness and bonding that takes place is difficult to duplicate, and takes effort on the part of those who are unable or decide not to breastfeed their own. Just be grateful that, if you choose to travel with a nursing baby, it is so much easier today than it was in the past.

Mail Order Roslyn is now available for purchase as an ebook on Amazon. I will be working on the print versions of my three most recent books starting the end of this week. 

(Speaking of previous books, does anyone recognize my hero named Elam Stewart in Mail Order Roslyn? He was a minor character in my previous book, Hannah's Handkerchief. It was one of those cases where I developed a character out of the blue in order to flesh out a scene, and I fell in love with him. He needed his own happily ever after.)

To find the book description and purchase link for Mail Order Roslyn, PLEASE CLICK HERE.