#virtualoregontrail Gearing Up for the Journey

Crossing the plains to the Oregon Territory was a trip that required a lot of planning. 

A family could expect to leave Missouri in the early Spring, travel all Summer in the heat, and arrive in the fall when the temperatures dropped low overnight. They had to carry as many household belongings as they could, while also leaving space for enough food to make the trip. The wagons had to be watertight for river crossings, have well-oiled canvas tops to keep out the rain and required tools and spare parts for repairs along the way. Planning in advance was absolutely necessary to survival.

The wagons used for overland travel were different than the typical farm wagons the family already owned. This wagon would have to be strong enough to carry as much as 2500 pounds while climbing mountains. Typical farm wagons weren’t strong enough to carry that load or to withstand the temperature extremes. Sometimes they tried to modify their farm wagons, but the prevailing advice was to build a wagon from seasoned hardwood especially for the journey. The men spent the winter getting the wagons ready. They built them with flatbeds and straight sides a few feet high. The wagons were tarred to caulk the seams and make them watertight for fording streams and rivers. Spare parts were also made and fitted securely under the wagon bed in case they needed an axle, wheel, or tongue replaced along the way. The tops were heavily oiled canvas, sometimes a double thickness, to keep the family’s belongings dry in the rain.

Each wagon was usually pulled by one or more yoke of oxen, and at least four yokes of oxen were required for the trip. They rotated them because it was so hard on the animals. Sometimes mules were used, but the oxen were preferred as they were much stronger animals. The cost of a wagon and oxen was as much as $400.

Advice on how to equip the wagons came from those who had already made the trip. Letters from those earlier emigrants to family or friends and newspaper articles offered tips on how much food to bring and other items they should carry along. The following food stocks were recommended for each wagon:

• 200# flour
• 75# bacon
• 10# rice
• 5# coffee
• 25# sugar
• Tea
• Dried fruit
• Salt
• Cornmeal
• Vinegar

It was also advised to stock the wagons with a stove and basic kitchenware, including a kettle, a frying pan, a coffee pot, plates, cups, and utensils. Water barrels were needed. Grease buckets and heavy rope were also essential. They needed bedding and a tent. When they added rifles and ammunition, the total cost of provisions could run $500 to $1000 per wagon. Today that equates to $15,000.00 to $30,000.00. James M. Allen was planning to make the trip with his wife’s parents and siblings. They would leave Missouri with five wagons. Add that up.

http://moziru.com/explore/Us%20History%20clipart%20oregon%20trail/#go_post_
10362_us-history-clipart-oregon-trail-20.jpg

How did the average farmer manage to pay for the trip? Some saved money for years to be able to afford to leave. Multi-generational families often pooled resources and planned the trip together. The wagons and provisions were the largest chunks of the cost. There was also a fee to be paid to the guide and cash required for ferry crossings, trading post and trail purchases and initial costs once they reached their destination. To gather the necessary cash they liquidated property and sold household goods that they couldn’t carry with them on the trail. They sold extra livestock and they sold the farm.

In February of 1845, James was busy. He had only two more months before he and his family would join the others leaving with the Military Immigrant Train.

#virtualoregontrail The Reasons They Went West

(This post was written by my cousin, Rene Rodgers, and posted with her permission)

In 1845 the Allen family was well-established in Platte County, Missouri.  James M Allen, his wife Hannah, and 18 month-old son Cyrus were living there, as were his parents Isaac and Margaret Allen, siblings, grandmother and aunts & uncles.  The 1840 US Census confirms that Hannah’s parents, Nancy and James B Riggs, and her 9 brothers & sisters also lived on a nearby farm.

Young James Allen - who was 23 in the Spring of 1845 - never recorded why he made the decision to move his family over 2200 miles, crossing the plains and the Rocky Mountains to settle in Oregon. Perhaps he dreamed of obtaining rich farmland or finding new business opportunities.  Or maybe his father-in-law, James Riggs, made the decision to go West and encouraged James to do the same.  Most women were primarily interested in stability, in making a home, and raising their children properly.  For the women, these were childbearing years – one out of every five adult females who traveled the trail was pregnant, and nearly every married woman had small children in tow.  So the decision to uproot the family and take them across the country was nearly always made by a man.  Hannah Allen not only had her toddler Cyrus, but she was pregnant as well.  It’s not likely that going to Oregon was her idea!

People made the journey westward for many reasons;  however, setting out on the Oregon Trail was not an easy decision.  Travelers were inspired by dreams of rich farmlands, but they were also motivated by difficult economic times in the east and diseases like tuberculosis, typhoid, yellow fever and malaria that were decimating the Midwest around 1837.  In the relatively crowded East, unsanitary conditions allowed diseases like cholera to flourish.  In the 1830s an epidemic of cholera was carried to America by infected rats and humans on passenger ships and, by 1850, the disease was killing 30,000 people a year. But the sickness that was most responsible was “Oregon Fever”.

Map showing the Oregon Trail, Oregon Country, and northern Mexico
http://www.ushistory.org/us/29b.asp

Financial reasons, like starting businesses and escaping debt, were motivations, as well.  Many emigrants traveled to Oregon to escape debt caused by the Panic of 1837.  That financial crisis was triggered when Andrew Jackson tore down the Second National Bank.  People rushed to the bank to take out their savings, but the bank ran out of money.   The aftermath resulted in a Depression that shriveled the value of land and the price of crops, and wages that fell 30 to 50 percent.  By 1842, the American Economy had been pushed to rock bottom.  Landowners couldn’t meet mortgage payments, and farmers could find fewer and fewer reasons not to leave for better lands.  They followed the example of their ancestors to seek a home in a new country as a sure way of bettering their condition.

Business opportunities abounded for blacksmiths, innkeepers, shopkeepers, flour mills, masons, printers, and more.   But for the most part, the emigrants were farmers – family men with wives and children – who were seeking a promised land of milk and honey.  In 1842 the US government passed a Preemption Bill that allowed an Oregon Territory farmer to “squat” on a piece of property; making improvements while he lived there gave the farmer first rights to purchase the land once it was surveyed.   Later, the Donation Land Law of 1850 provided up to 640 acres of land to families willing to settle there.

Title page, The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California, 
written by Lansford Hastings, and published in 1845
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansford_Hastings

Whatever his reasons were, James Miller Allen made the momentous decision to pack up his young family and make the journey overland to Oregon.  And in preparation for the trek, James would certainly need some things that money couldn’t buy.  In the words of the Reverend Yantis, “I would lay in a good stock of patience and perseverance.”    (Quoted in Eaton, The Overland Trail, pg 10)

#virtualoregontrail Bibliography

The following published and online sources were used in researching information for the #virtualoregontrail series of blog posts:

• Clark, Keith and Tiller, Lowell, Terrible Trail: the Meek Cutoff, 1845 (Bend, Oregon: Maverick Publications, 1966)

• Cooley, Michael F. and Mary Lou, The Transcribed Diary of Eli Casey Cooley as he came across the Oregon Trail and the Meek Cutoff in 1845, November 2004 for the Officer-Cooley Family Association www.oregonpioneers.com/CooleyDiary.htm 

• Coons, Frederica B., Trail to Oregon (Portland, Oregon: Binford & Mort, 1954)

• Eaton, Herbert, The Overland Trail  (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons / Capricorn Books, 1974)

• James Field's diary, as published in the Willamette Farmer https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn85042522/

• Hill, William E., The Oregon Trail, Yesterday and Today (Caldwell, Idaho, Caxton Printers, 2000)

• Lenox, Edward Henry, Overland to Oregon – in the tracks of Lewis and Clark (Oakland, Calif: Limited Edition edited by Robert Whitaker, 1904) 

• Lockley, Fred.  Captain Sol Tetherow- Wagon Train Master;  Personal Narrative of his son, Sam Tetherow, who crossed the plains to Oregon, in 1845, and Personal Narrative of Jack McNemee, who was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1848, and whose father built the fourth house in Portland.  Published by Fred Lockley, 1243 East Stark St., Portland. Oregon; Date Unknown. https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu

• McGrane, Reginald. The Panic of 1837: Some Financial Problems of the Jacksonian Era (New York, NY: Russell & Russell, 1965) 

• Pierce, Lois A., Lost Immigrants of 1845 and The Blue Bucket Gold  (Shelton, Washington: Shelton-Mason County Journal, 1962)

• Ragen, Brooks Geer, The Meek Cutoff, Tracing the Oregon Trail's Lost Wagon Train of 1845 (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2013)

• Schlissel, Lillian, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey (New York, Schocken Books, 1982)

• Sharp, James Roger, The Jacksonians Versus the Banks: Politics in the States After the Panic of 1837 (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1970) 

• Smith, Ross A., Oregon Overland: Three Roads of Adversity http://oregonoverland.com/

• Wilbur, Sanford R & Sally H, The McCully Train: Iowa to Oregon 1852 (Gresham, Oregon: SYMBIOS, 2000)

• Meek Cutoff, 1845, www.oregonhistorictrailsfund.org/trails/meek-cutoff-1845/

• Reasons for Westward Expansion - History

#virtualoregontrail

173 years have passed since James Miller Allen began making plans to leave from St. Joseph, Missouri on what would later become known as the Meek Cutoff Trail to Oregon. While all who traveled west by wagon train endured unimaginable hardships, this trip was a particularly arduous one. There are Allen descendants who haven't yet heard this story, or all of it anyway, and descendants of others on the trail who may be interested. My cousin Rene and I will attempt to recreate the journey using published diaries, books, maps, our research and the stories that have been passed down within the family. We'll share this #virtualoregontrail journey here and on our family facebook page, starting with some background information on planning and preparing for the trip. We'll hit the trail in mid-April when the Allen family left their home for St. Joseph to meet up with others who would join them on the trip west.

Spoiler alert: James made it to Oregon. Barely.