I thought I would continue our trip west in 1848 this week. Our wagon trail left Independence on April 5th. We hope it will take less than six months, but more likely it will take seven or eight. Good thing we don’t know that yet.

You already know from previous blogs about the clothes necessary for the trip and about some of the maps available at the time. I thought this week we would consider the provisioning for the six to eight month trip.

The cost of the trip ran between six hundred and a thousand dollars, and many families saved years for the trip. This total included the wagon, mules or oxen and provisions, but did not include money needed along the way for additional provisions, ferries or for Indian guides.

Building a wagon and provisioning were major undertakings. According to “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey,” the overland wagon “had to be built of seasoned hardwood to withstand the extremes of temperature; an ordinary farm wagon was not strong enough. The classic prairie schooner was not the big-wheeled, boat-curved Conestoga wagon, but a smaller, lighter wagon with straight lines top and bottom.” Typically, emigrants used a farm wagon with a flat bed about ten feet wide with sides two feet high. It had to be amphibious and its slats caulked for river crossings. It should carry no more than 2,000 – 2,500 pounds. The covering of the wagon was a double thickness of canvas “as rainproofed as oiled linen or muslin, or sailcloth could be made to be.”

Foodstuffs were assembled at the start of the journey. “The Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California”, recommended that each emigrant supply himself with 200 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of bacon, 10 pounds of coffee, 20 pounds of sugar and 10 pounds of salt. Additional supplies included chipped beef, rice, tea, dried beans, dried fruit, baking soda, vinegar, pickles, mustard, and tallow. Butter may be preserved by boiling it thoroughly and skimming off the scum as it rises to the top until it is quite clear like oil. It is then placed in tin canisters and soldered up. Packed in this way, it keeps sweet for a great length of time.

If you think of a family of six, food stocks would nearly consume all the allowable weight. Then there would be needed spare parts for the wagon, tar and grease barrels, water barrels and spare parts for the wagon.

Think of that farm wagon again. After the provisions there is precious little room left for personal possessions, much less sleeping space for a family of five or six or nine.

The diet would hopefully be supplemented by wild game, and this was plentiful in the 1840’s, but as the number of trains multiplied along the Oregon Trail, some as large as 400 wagons, the game disappeared and the diet, well, the diet became rather spare.

Single women occasionally took the trek, though they were rare. The Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey tells the story of Rebecca Ketchum of New York who decided she wanted to go to Oregon to become a teacher. She traveled by stagecoach, unaccompanied by anyone, from New York to Independence when she joined a group for the remainder of the way to Oregon.

Although a woman, but probably because she was single, she spent most of the trip on horseback with the men. The wives apparently did not consider her worthy of riding in the wagon with mothers and children. Ketchum’s account also illustrates at least one nineteenth-century woman’s clear sense of her own worth. When she accidently discovered that she was paying more than others for her place in the wagon train, she refused to do washing any more, since the men – who had paid less than she – were not expected to wash clothes.

And that leads me to my next blog when I’ll talk about love and marriage on the trail. Some facts might well surprise you.

Two weeks ago we blogged about Calamity Jane.  Here, as promised, is a portrait of the man she claimed to be the love of her life—Wild Bill Hickock. Sadly, perhaps, Calamity is barely mentioned in sketches of Wild Bill’s life.  We can only guess that their fabled romance was either one-sided, on Calamity’s part, or mostly invented by the dime novel writers of the day—the same writers who transformed Wild Bill into an American legend. 

James Butler Hickock was born May 27, 1837 in Troy Grove, Illinois. In the years prior to the Civil War, he worked as a hunter, a muleskinner, a bodyguard and as a wagonmaster on the Santa Fe trail. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he became a civilian scout at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  Wild Bill’s legendary career began in 1861 when he was tending stock at a station for the Overland Stage.  When three men came to collect money owed them by the station’s owner, a fight broke out.  Bill and a fellow worker brutally killed the men who’d come to get their cash.  They were tried and acquitted on grounds of self defense.  Four years later, a writer would turn this incident into a heroic stand, with Bill holding off a gang of terrorists and receiving eleven bullet wounds in the process.  Similar encounters dogged Bill for the rest of his life.  He was a brave man, but reckless and prone to violence.  In many cases, his exploits were blown up to serve as fodder for the pulp fiction market of the day.  Bill swiftly became an American pop star.  Between 1867 and 1871 Wild Bill served variously as a lawman and army scout. Sometimes his tactics were too much for the townspeople.  In 1869 he was appointed sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas.  After killing two men he was voted out of office.  In 1871 he was appointed marshal of Abilene.  After a gunfight in which he accidentally shot and killed his own deputy, Wild Bill turned in his badge and began to drift.  For a time he toured with Buffalo Bill’s show, but he hated acting and left to become a professional gambler.In 1876 he returned to Cheyenne where he married Agnes Lake Thatcher, the owner of a circus.  From there he went to Deadwood, hoping to strike it rich in the gambling saloons.On August 2, 1876, he was playing poker when a drifter named Jack McCall shot him in the back of the head.  At the time he died, Wild Bill was holding two black aces, two black eights and the jack of diamonds—to be forever known as the “deadman’s hand.”  He was buried in Deadwood.  His famous Sharps rifle was buried with him. Many actors have played Wild Bill in films.  Who’s your favorite?  Which portrayal seems most accurate?  Who would you like to see play Bill in a movie about his life?

A perfect combo for this western author – as well as the heroine in my next ‘Bride’ book ~ Lily loves her cowboy and her hot chocolate. While researching beverage servers of the 1800’s, I discovered the wonderful world of antique chocolate pots–like a coffee pot, only specifically designed for serving hot chocolate. They just don’t serve hot chocolate the way they used to. I was intrigued to find out that chocolate was so revered by the Aztecs that they used chocolate as both food and currency. Near the end of the XVIII century, Spanish explorers took chocolate back to Spain where it became the Kings’ Official Drink in New Spain and Europe. Europeans began preparing chocolate with cream and sugar, creating what we know today as Hot Chocolate.

The first chocolate pots, like that of my heroine (shown above – 1852), were made of sterling silver, and sometimes copper. Similar to coffee pots, chocolate pots were designed with shorter spouts and did not have filters, though some had holes through the center of the lids for stir sticks. Ceramic chocolate pots gained popularity in the 1890’s and 1900’s, the leading manufacturer being Limoges, in France. I’m suddenly in the mood for a chocolate party 🙂

Good Morning! Hope everyone’s day is going well. My topic today is prices. I swear, I went to the grocery store recently and carried out two little sacks. I thought there must be some mistake when the bill came to $79.60. Bread was $2.29 and a gallon of milk was over $3.00. That got me comparing prices of things in the 1800’s. Besides, I needed to know the price of coffee for the story I’m working on.

I can’t imagine paying just this little amount for staples. Blows my mind. And remember that the prices varied by location and quality. Prices in mining towns were higher than most anywhere else. These prices were from about 1880 to the turn of the century.

A Pound of Tea —  12 cents to $1.00                                                

A Pound of Coffee —  15 cents to 35 cents

5 Pounds of Flour —  14 cents

A Pound of Preserved Meat — 12 cents to 25 cents

5 Pounds of Sugar — 34 cents

A Dozen Eggs — 20 cents

A Pound of Butter — 25 cents

A Pound of Bacon — 12 cents                                                                    

A Gallon of Syrup or Molasses — 40 cents to $1.15                                        

One can of peaches — 20 cents

I didn’t find any prices for bread since everyone baked their own or milk because most had a cow or a goat. Totally different from today, huh?

Spices were outrageous — $12.00 to $75.00 a pound so not too many could afford it. But most of the spices were imported so they had to figure in the cost of shipping. If you think about it, spices are just as expensive today. I paid around $3.00 the other day for 4 oz. of cinnamon. I think that computes to something like $48 a pound. Yikes!

The pioneer learned to be very frugal with their foodstuffs. If weevils got in the flour, they sifted out the little bugs and used it anyway. They didn’t throw much away. And asyou can imagine, losing their staples to some kind of disaster meant doing without, so they protected their food supply with vigilance. They also planted gardens and raised animals for their meat. They lived off the land and scratched out an existence. It might not’ve been luxurious, but they survived. Life was far from easy. I’ve loved watching a new TV series that called Kid Nation, where they placed 40 kids in the Nevada desert in an old ghost town with just the basic necessities. It’s been interesting watching how those children cope with cooking over a wood stove, hauling their water, and using outhouses. Kinda funny at times seeing their frustration. But, they’re learning a lot of skills that will help them through life. They’ve sure developed an appreciation for the things they have. And I say that’s a very good thing.

At http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873707.html you can find prices for selected items for a variety of years, plus at Info Please.com you see the population of the U.S. from Colonial to present day. Lots of fascinating information and statistics here.

And at www.softwave.info/incanus/sears.html  you can learn that bullets costs between 14 cents to $4.25 a hundred. Revolvers were 68 cents to $13.75. They also list the price of clothing and all kind of household goods. A great website to bookmark.

Try this site http://home.insightbb.com/~d.lawson/  for just about anything pertaining to medieval times to American colonial times to the Old West. This is an excellent site for research. I reference it a lot.

Then, I found a neat website – www.westegg.com/inflation/  — where you choose a year, put in an amount and it’ll tell you what that price equals to today.

For instance….$500 in 1880 is worth roughly $10,438 today

And we’d pay $3.25 for the pound of coffee that was 15 cents in 1880. That’s about what I pay.

Research is a must when writing and especially historicals. Writers want to make their stories as realistic as possible and any tidbit we can learn helps our stories come alive even more. I’m always finding little details about things that can put my reader on the page with the characters. That’s what writers have to do. And, writing has rewarded me with increased knowledge of the world in which my characters lived. History is full of fascinating things just waiting for me to uncover. I’m a sleuth deluxe when it comes to digging for facts.  

Anyway, it’s kinda neat to see how prices compare to things as they were back in the 1800’s. I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a look back. Maybe you won’t cringe too much the next you go to the grocery store.

What do you think about the price of groceries?

Ever yearn for the pioneer life of gardens and milk cows?

Our Big Fall Fest Bonanza is still in full swing. If you haven’t registered, go to the Primrose News Office page. Time’s a wastin’.

In the years since I first started writing novels, I’ve explored the west’s many legends: the gambler, the gunfight, the soldier, the fallen woman, the rancher, the half-breed. I’ve written about the Utes whom I greatly admire as among the best horsemen in the west.
The one symbol – or legend – I’ve never written about, but have been fascinated with, is the emigrant.  I’m in the midst of correcting that neglect.

One of my friends disagreed with my use of emigrant in speaking of those traveling across the country to California or Oregon. Emigrants, she contended, come from other countries. But that was the term given them in my handy “The Prairie Traveler” written in 1859 by an Army officer.   I mentioned the book before and you’ll probably hear much more from it because it has become my bible.

While it’s fun writing about the vivid characters that populate western fiction, I don’t think there’s been enough written about the “everyman” who risked everything to make the four to five month perilous journey to an uncertain future. My true heroes have always been those who packed everything they owned in a wagon, risked Indians and drought and mountains to achieve a dream.

We often talk about movies here. I haven’t seen any mention of a movie called “The Oregon Trail,” starring Fred McMurray, another of my off-beat favorites. It’s probably as true to the real facts as any film I’ve seen.

I come by my interest honestly. I grew up on tales my father told of his father’s homesteading in Arizona. My grandfather took his wife and six children to homestead in Arizona in 1912, and the stories are wonderful, including one in which my grandmother went outside to find by dad, then two, playing with a rattlesnake.

But as usual, I digress. More stories about that later.

I thought, instead, I would include some more information about the trail west for these sturdy individuals. The journey from the jumping off point of towns along the Missouri River to California or Oregon usually took six to eight months. Many guidebooks promised no more than three to four months time – a summer vacation. But the guidebooks were wrong.    Starting in mid-April, the emigrants would discover that the overland passage took every ounce of ingenuity and tenacity they possessed. They traveled in wagons with no springs, under a canvas that heated up to 110 degrees by midday, through drenching rains and summer storms.

Many used my trusty “Prairie Traveler” handbook that advised using oxen instead of mules. You could also hitch a cow to a wagon if necessary, or ride an oxen as one would ride a horse.

One feature that fascinates me about the “Prairie Traveler” is the mile by mile description of the route. By the mid 1850″s the trail was plain for all to see, worn by earlier wagons, but information was still necessary.

Here are a few excerpts from the Handbook giving directions from Westport, Missouri to Pike’s Peak.

4 ½ miles (west from Westport): Indian Creek – the road runs over a beautiful country. Indian Creek is a small wooded stream, with abundance of grass and water.

8 3/4: Cedar Creek – the road passes over a fine country, and there is a good camping place at Cedar Creek.

8 ½ miles: The road is smooth and level, with less wood than before. Camping good.

9 ½ miles: Willow Springs – at nine miles the road passes “Black Jack Creek,” where there is a good camping place. The road has but little wood upon it at first, but it increases toward the end of the march.

At 20 miles, our traveler reaches the Big Bend of the Arkansas – “The road strikes the sand-hills of the Arkansas River. They are soon passed, however, and the level river bottom is reached. The river has a rapid current flowing over a quicksand bed . . .

Then we reach Black Squirrel Creek. “This is a locality which is very subject to severe storms, and it was here that I encountered the most severe snow-storm that I have ever known on the first day of May, 1858. I would advise travelers to hasten past this spot as rapidly as possible during the winter and spring months . . .”

And on it goes, mile by mile, the handbook stating where the grass and wood flourished, where to cross the river, and remarking on the best sites for camping, hunting and resting.

It makes fascinating reading, particularly as I imagine myself sitting on the wagon seat, my backside longing for the day to end, yet looking forward to the next stage of the journey.

I’ll continue to offer more directions in coming weeks and hope you’ll come along for the journey.