Women married early in those days, and it’s not uncommon to read about fifteen-year-old brides traveling the Oregon Trail.  Imagine a young girl, just married, leaving her parents, knowing that she’ll never see them again.  Mary Ann Boatman, who was nineteen when she went west with her husband Willis, wrote about leaving home:

About 10 o’clock everything was loaded into the big ox wagon.  Then came the hardest task of all, for me, … to say goodbye.  But the time had come … a loving embrace, … a farewell kiss, a “God bless you all.”  Yes, I stepped out of that dear old house that had been my home all of my life … never to enter it again, nor to see my loving mother again … Yes, as I said, the time had come.  I walked out over the path that I had trod all my short life where I had sported and played with my brothers and sisters and schoolmates.  Everything looked so dear to me that morning.  Dear father opened the old gate for me, then helped me …climb into the big wagon.  Then came the words “gee, whoa, get up Deke and Dime, Buck and Brite.”  Those were the oxen’s names … The whip cracked and we were off. 
(From Surviving the Oregon Trail, 1852 by Weldon Willis Rau.)
      

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Ann Boatman traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852.  She and her husband Willis settled in Puyallup.  Many years later she wrote about her Oregon Trail experiences. 
Photograph courtesy of Weldon Willis Rau.

Some of the most unpleasant and difficult tasks on the Trail fell to women.  They were responsible for feeding their families, which meant long hours hunched over campfires, occasionally forced to create a meal out of little but stale biscuits and maggot-infested bacon. Women were also in charge of caring for children and the sick, trying to comfort everyone even if they were ill or frightened themselves.  Women were expected to do the mending and the washing, which took a whole day and required the woman to haul heavy buckets of water and heat it over a campfire.

On top of all of these chores, women were never supposed to complain.  They were expected to be patient, hard-working, neat and clean all the time.  That must have been impossible in the hot, dusty desert where washing water was hard to come by.  They wore long dresses which were hot and made walking difficult.  There was always the danger of a long dress catching on fire while a woman tried to cook.  Many women, like Elizabeth Simmons, were pregnant or gave birth while they were traveling.  Wagon trains would only wait so long for the sick, and these women had to recover quickly or be left behind.

In spite of all these difficulties, women persevered.  They became tough, adjusting to the rugged lifestyle.  There was no room for helpless people on the Trail, and women quickly filled in wherever they needed to, especially if their husbands or fathers became sick or died. Phoebe Judson Goodall, a pioneer of 1853, wrote about a friend of hers:

"It was my privilege in after years to become acquainted with a refined lady who buried her husband here [on the plains], and she, besides caring for her two little children, drove her team through to the coast, and did as much, and more, than many of the men in helping to develop the new country."
(From A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home by Pheobe Judson Goodall)

Women who had never held the reins before learned how to drive the wagon team. They bragged about the delicious meals they devised – they even learned to bake cakes on an open fire.  Women who had never been taught to shoot found themselves ready to defend the camp against horse thieves. 

And, lucky for us, women kept journals and diaries on the trail, and later wrote reminiscences of their experiences.  Women’s journals are some of the most beautiful and expressive documents of the Oregon Trail days, and they survive to help us learn what their lives were like.

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