In my continuing quest to try and understand what has happened mentally with D friends of mine who have seem to gone off the deep end, I came across this article/podcast by Sasha Stone…interesting. She gives many example and also brings in the idea of mass psychosis. You don’t have to listen to the podcast as it’s in written form below the podcast window with the embedded videos she references:
About that traveling by wagon, in 1908 my dad’s family and several extended families traveled by wagons, pulled by horses, from NW Arkansas to far Western Oklahoma, about 400 miles and it took them 30 days. My grandmother Nancy Elizabeth, born in 1869, was a fiesty little almost five foot tall woman in her 90’s, when she told me about them having to cross the Canadian River in the area which is now between Oklahoma City and Norman Oklahoma. She told me that my dad who was five years old at the time started crying and became scared and they forded across the river. His comments as she remembered were, “Mom, I want to go to Oklahoma through the weeds and not through the water.” As she told the story, it was difficult crossing the river, so they had to put extra horses on the other side of the river with ropes to pull the wagon through the mud.
Grandmother told me that as they came up on the other side of the river there were a fair number of Indians riding up on horseback and she became scared and thought they might be in grave danger. As it turned out the Indians actually helped them get the wagons on up the bank and watched while they hung clothing, that had become wet in the beds of the wagons, up on ropes to dry. They prepared a meal and shared it with the Indians who she turned out to be fine people.
It took them 30 days to cross 400 miles and reach some real sorry land that was available for them to try to farm which was not easy. Dad had two older sisters, one born in the late 1800’s and the other in January of 1900 – Esther Pearl who lived to be over 100 years old. Dad’s mom, Nancy Elizabeth, lived to be 94 and dad lived to be 94 also so they were kind of long livers. When dad was in grade school the two older sisters, Ola and Esther Pearl would put their younger brother between them and they shared an old beat up, one eyed horse for their school transportation.
A lot happened during the last century because my dad was 14 before he ever rode in a vehicle that was not pulled by a horse and in the 1960’s he and mom flew by jet over to Europe to join me and my wife for a bit of vacation when I was stationed in Germany in the Army.
At the same time, early 1900’s my mom’s family moved from Missouri to the Texas panhandle where my great grandmother was the Postmistress of a small town, now a ghost town, which she named Abra, Texas after her deceased husband. The living in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s was difficult in the border states not recovered from the Civil War and a lot of folk moved West looking for something a bit better. My dad’s grandfather returned from the War and they told him that the man never smiled again, he had no sense of joy or humor after fighting for the South in a terrible war. We had others on both mom and dad’s side of the family and most fought for the South but not always.
So that’s my story about traveling in an old wagon, I still have the muzzle loading shotgun my great grandfather kept close and they did their 30 day journey by wagon and my dad used it to shoot rabbits to feed the family when he was about ten years old. It seems strange to become 80 years old this year and know the stories about such a different time not that long ago.
RE: The Oregon Trail–From what I understand, the thousand plus miles, month’s long trek was really brutal, and for the length of the trail, it was littered with often cherished but heavy possessions, dumped to lighten the load, with used up, or broken wheels and other items, dead animals, and the graves of pioneers who died on the trek.
RE: Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon
Boy, Pete is really over the target, because the MSM, leftist members of Congress, and those who oppose him in the Pentagon (apparently quite a large crew), are digging up and inflating every picayune item, trying to slap every charge they can against him, hoping that their cumulative weight/force will be able to drive him and his reforms out of the Pentagon.
Their latest phony charge; he spent thousands to set up a makeup studio for himself.*
Something about the Oregon Trail that not a lot of people know is that it worked both ways. Many people returned to the East, either giving up on getting to Oregon Country, or unable to make a living once they got there. (Lots of people returned to their home countries after landing at Ellis Island, which not a lot of people know about either.)
Only about 300,000 settlers used it, and no known statistics of how many returned; something under 10% of them died on the way, usually of diseases such as cholera: when large groups camped together sanitation was poor. Oregon Country was accessible by ship for those who could afford that (and was no picnic either, having to round Cape Horn) and later, of course, by railway.
Parts of the Oregon Trail can still be visited, and parts of it are now I-80 and I-84.
In Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Dana describes meeting a man in California who had walked overland from the East to Oregon Country, and then come south to California.
I’d love to refer you to Francis Parkman’s Oregon Trail but the title is somewhat misleading: he and a friend were on vacation hunting, and they traveled something less than half of it, and don’t have much to say about the emigrants. The diaries of the Lewis and Clark expedition are better in terms of understanding the route but predate the Oregon Trail considerably.
Snow, my thoughts too. He is causing them pain. GOOD! Weed them out.
OldTexan, yes we are close to those before us.
My Great Grandfather and his 3 brothers from SC fought for the South. Two died. Somewhere I have a copy of a letter sent to him by their farmhand after the War. It said, come to Memphis, lots of opportunities. I remember visiting my Dad’s Aunts in Memphis in the early 50’s. His Dad, born in Memphis, moved to Atlanta where Dad was born. Prior to moving to Atlanta, we moved to Galveston, Texas. He was a carpenter, built a house that survived the hurricane. During the Depression, Dad’s family moved to San Antonio, Texas.
I have BA/MA in History. I have always thought of History as a River, with tributaries flowing in, causing ripples in time
Yellowstone 1883 was about the oregon trail in part, i think they stuck the landing in the third iteration
My great-grandfather, having left his Quaker meeting to join the Union Army in 1861, and serving through to Appomattox, left Pennsylvania and moved west, in a wagon, to Lawrence, Kansas.
@physicsguy: [Sasha Stone] gives many example and also brings in the idea of mass psychosis.
Stone specifies that as “mass formation psychosis.”
I’ve run into this term, mass formation psychosis, before. As far as I can tell, it means mob psychology with more syllables and a clinical spin.
My mother suffered amphetamine psychosis and was locked up for several months.
For example, when I once came home from college, she had a massive air purifier rattling away on her bed. She explained that her landlord was putting LSD into the air she was breathing.
When she got out of the hospital, she was still crazy, but she had learned not to express her thoughts out loud to doctors.
Psychosis is a serious word to me.
Something serious has happened to Democrats, as with many mass episodes throughout history. However I wouldn’t describe it as psychosis, as tempting as that might be when applied to one’s opponents.
RE: Our military is in real trouble–
From recent examples, it is glaringly obvious that Obama and Biden dismissed real, conservative war fighters and replaced them, stuffed the military with as many leftists as they could, soldiers and military bureaucrats who could be counted on–the less wary of them–to take the risk to leak to a very sympathetic MSM, to publicly object to, to maliciously comply with, and to outright defy new, traditional and conservative leadership, when it came into office, apparently believing that they would suffer no real repercussions.
It is going to take a lot of work to identify, to root out, and to fire the worst, most influential and dangerous individuals and perhaps, to even have to reshape whole DOD organizations which have been subverted.
Take a look at what this turkey–apparently pretty high up in the DOD table of organization–says, in the clip below.*
Old Texan–thank you for taking the time to share that wonderful story of your family. Yes, a very different time–not that long ago!
And Neo–thank you for once again expanding my horizons
I agree with huxley that calling the Dems’ delusions “psychosis” makes it hard to distinguish from actual clinical psychosis. But it’s some sort of mass hysteria, akin perhaps to the colonial witch-burning episodes, or to the wild tales of child abuse in day-care centers, which so many believed. You can present people with facts, and they simply refuse to accept them.
Interesting, and coincidental — I have written two novels about pioneers on the California trail, and just this very day I was looking at pictures of Sutter’s fort, as the current WIP concerns the early days of the gold rush.
The historic interpreter is correct, in noting that the wagons were packed tightly with supplies, and not used to ride along in, as well as being pulled by ox teams — not horses, as so often seen in western movies. (Horses were too expensive, and incapable of enduring the hard use of being draft animals on a rough trail. Oxen were for pulling heavy loads, and in a pinch, as emergency food.) The emigrant were without springs and afforded a very rough, bumpy ride. And yes — most of the wagon train pioneers walked. It was slightly inaccurate, though, saying that the western trail emigrants were not well off. Most of them were at least moderately well to do, as they would need to have, or have the wherewithal to purchase a years worth of food supplies, the wagons and the stock – a considerable expense then.
More here – in my retelling of the journey for young readers – https://www.amazon.com/West-Toward-Sunset-Celia-Hayes-ebook/dp/B0DQJT72WP/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=0qssp&content-id=amzn1.sym.bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_p=bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_r=136-1626240-3592226&pd_rd_wg=UAAKa&pd_rd_r=16b9913e-f1d2-439d-865d-37e1858ab49e&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk
Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.
–Virginia Reed, of the Donner Party, later advising a relative coming West
_____________________________
Words to live by.
I’m reading Joan Didion in French and thinking about her. She was old California stock. Didion’s great-great-great-grandmother, Nancy Hardin Cornwall, was part of the Donner Party but left the group before they reached the Sierra Nevada.
Didion was fascinated by the Donner Party from the time she was a child. I wonder if that was a factor in that breathless sense of disaster near at hand which haunts her writing.
Speaking of covered wagons…
_____________________________
Oh, Mary, I have not wrote half of the trouble we’ve had, but I have you wrote you enough to let you know what trouble is is. But thank God, we are the only family which did not eat human flesh…
Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.
–Virginia Reed, of the Donner Party, later advising a relative coming West
–Joan Didion, “Where I Was From”
_____________________________
Words to live by.
I’m reading Joan Didion in French and thinking about her. She was old California stock. Didion’s great-great-great-grandmother, Nancy Hardin Cornwall, was part of the Donner Party but left the group before they reached the Sierra Nevada.
Didion was fascinated by the Donner Party from the time she was a child. I wonder if this was a factor in that breathless sense of disaster near at hand which haunts her writing.
Will allow approximately 100,000 families to receive funding to send their children to private schools.
Funny how, with Constitutional carry the law in an increasing number of states, there are not rivers of blood flowing in the streets, and the situation is not something like the clip linked below.*
OldTexan,
Thanks for the interesting family history!
Some relations of my mother that had a bad trip.
From Wikipedia
The Sager orphans (sometimes referred to as the Sager children) were the children of Henry and Naomi Sager. In April 1844 the Sager family took part in the great westward migration, taking the Oregon Trail. During the journey both Henry and Naomi died, leaving their seven children orphaned. Later adopted by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, they were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents, as well as brothers John and Francis Sager, were killed during the Whitman massacre in November 1847. About 1860 Catherine, the oldest daughter, wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. Today it is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.”
Thanks, Old Texan, for that account of your families’ travels by wagon. My grandmother and her family may well have rubbed shoulders with them, as they traveled by wagon to Oklahoma and acquired land by participating in the Cherokee Strip land rush of 1893. My grandmother was a young girl of about fifteen at the time. They had a farm near Ponca City and some of the family still live in Oklahoma.
My grandfather’s father was a carpenter with a full set of tools. He could build a house, a barn or furniture – whatever was needed. They traveled by wagon around Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota in the late 1800s.
They ended up in Oklahoma in the early 1900s where my maternal grandparents met and married. They moved to Denver where my grandfather learned to be an electrician. He was hired by F. O. Stanley to help build the Stanley hotel in Estes Park. After the hotel was finished, he worked for Mr. Stanley in building a hydro-electric plant that provided electricity to the hotel and then the town. They lived in Estes Park the rest of their lo lives.
He told me many stories about his youth and traveling by wagon as his father traveled to wherever he got work. I wish I had written it all down. But I was young and didn’t recognize the value of that history he was relating.
Both my grandparents were excellent with horses. It was what they had learned while traveling by wagon as youngsters.
They both lived to fly in a jet airliner too. And they thought it was just a dandy way to travel.
Today a lot of apocalyptic fiction starts out with the loss of electricity. People don’t realize how little time we’ve had electricity
When I was growing up I saw a picture of a couple riding in a horse drawn wagon. These were my great grandparents. I asked my mother where did her grandfather farm, “That’s just how people got around “. My mother’s family lived in Queens.
1908 my dad’s family and several extended families traveled by wagons, pulled by horses, from NW Arkansas to far Western Oklahoma
My mother’s family moved by covered wagon in the 1920s in the same area, Kansas/Oklahoma. In fact, my grandparents on my mother’s side may have met during the Oklahoma land rush — there is a story of wagon with an organ and my grandfather and his sisters dancing. He would have been around six years old.
@ JFM > ” People don’t realize how little time we’ve had electricity”
The ranch where my LDS mission last summer was based didn’t get “wired” electricity until 1970, although they did have gas powered electric generators before then, I don’t know how early.
As for traveling west by wagon, it was posh compared to pulling handcarts!
(The companies did have a complement of support wagons for the food and heavy items.)
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In my continuing quest to try and understand what has happened mentally with D friends of mine who have seem to gone off the deep end, I came across this article/podcast by Sasha Stone…interesting. She gives many example and also brings in the idea of mass psychosis. You don’t have to listen to the podcast as it’s in written form below the podcast window with the embedded videos she references:
https://sashastone.substack.com/p/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-sane-democrat
About that traveling by wagon, in 1908 my dad’s family and several extended families traveled by wagons, pulled by horses, from NW Arkansas to far Western Oklahoma, about 400 miles and it took them 30 days. My grandmother Nancy Elizabeth, born in 1869, was a fiesty little almost five foot tall woman in her 90’s, when she told me about them having to cross the Canadian River in the area which is now between Oklahoma City and Norman Oklahoma. She told me that my dad who was five years old at the time started crying and became scared and they forded across the river. His comments as she remembered were, “Mom, I want to go to Oklahoma through the weeds and not through the water.” As she told the story, it was difficult crossing the river, so they had to put extra horses on the other side of the river with ropes to pull the wagon through the mud.
Grandmother told me that as they came up on the other side of the river there were a fair number of Indians riding up on horseback and she became scared and thought they might be in grave danger. As it turned out the Indians actually helped them get the wagons on up the bank and watched while they hung clothing, that had become wet in the beds of the wagons, up on ropes to dry. They prepared a meal and shared it with the Indians who she turned out to be fine people.
It took them 30 days to cross 400 miles and reach some real sorry land that was available for them to try to farm which was not easy. Dad had two older sisters, one born in the late 1800’s and the other in January of 1900 – Esther Pearl who lived to be over 100 years old. Dad’s mom, Nancy Elizabeth, lived to be 94 and dad lived to be 94 also so they were kind of long livers. When dad was in grade school the two older sisters, Ola and Esther Pearl would put their younger brother between them and they shared an old beat up, one eyed horse for their school transportation.
A lot happened during the last century because my dad was 14 before he ever rode in a vehicle that was not pulled by a horse and in the 1960’s he and mom flew by jet over to Europe to join me and my wife for a bit of vacation when I was stationed in Germany in the Army.
At the same time, early 1900’s my mom’s family moved from Missouri to the Texas panhandle where my great grandmother was the Postmistress of a small town, now a ghost town, which she named Abra, Texas after her deceased husband. The living in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s was difficult in the border states not recovered from the Civil War and a lot of folk moved West looking for something a bit better. My dad’s grandfather returned from the War and they told him that the man never smiled again, he had no sense of joy or humor after fighting for the South in a terrible war. We had others on both mom and dad’s side of the family and most fought for the South but not always.
So that’s my story about traveling in an old wagon, I still have the muzzle loading shotgun my great grandfather kept close and they did their 30 day journey by wagon and my dad used it to shoot rabbits to feed the family when he was about ten years old. It seems strange to become 80 years old this year and know the stories about such a different time not that long ago.
RE: The Oregon Trail–From what I understand, the thousand plus miles, month’s long trek was really brutal, and for the length of the trail, it was littered with often cherished but heavy possessions, dumped to lighten the load, with used up, or broken wheels and other items, dead animals, and the graves of pioneers who died on the trek.
RE: Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon
Boy, Pete is really over the target, because the MSM, leftist members of Congress, and those who oppose him in the Pentagon (apparently quite a large crew), are digging up and inflating every picayune item, trying to slap every charge they can against him, hoping that their cumulative weight/force will be able to drive him and his reforms out of the Pentagon.
Their latest phony charge; he spent thousands to set up a makeup studio for himself.*
* See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/pete-hegseth-delivers-absolutely-savage-response-far-left/
Something about the Oregon Trail that not a lot of people know is that it worked both ways. Many people returned to the East, either giving up on getting to Oregon Country, or unable to make a living once they got there. (Lots of people returned to their home countries after landing at Ellis Island, which not a lot of people know about either.)
Only about 300,000 settlers used it, and no known statistics of how many returned; something under 10% of them died on the way, usually of diseases such as cholera: when large groups camped together sanitation was poor. Oregon Country was accessible by ship for those who could afford that (and was no picnic either, having to round Cape Horn) and later, of course, by railway.
Parts of the Oregon Trail can still be visited, and parts of it are now I-80 and I-84.
In Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Dana describes meeting a man in California who had walked overland from the East to Oregon Country, and then come south to California.
I’d love to refer you to Francis Parkman’s Oregon Trail but the title is somewhat misleading: he and a friend were on vacation hunting, and they traveled something less than half of it, and don’t have much to say about the emigrants. The diaries of the Lewis and Clark expedition are better in terms of understanding the route but predate the Oregon Trail considerably.
Snow, my thoughts too. He is causing them pain. GOOD! Weed them out.
OldTexan, yes we are close to those before us.
My Great Grandfather and his 3 brothers from SC fought for the South. Two died. Somewhere I have a copy of a letter sent to him by their farmhand after the War. It said, come to Memphis, lots of opportunities. I remember visiting my Dad’s Aunts in Memphis in the early 50’s. His Dad, born in Memphis, moved to Atlanta where Dad was born. Prior to moving to Atlanta, we moved to Galveston, Texas. He was a carpenter, built a house that survived the hurricane. During the Depression, Dad’s family moved to San Antonio, Texas.
I have BA/MA in History. I have always thought of History as a River, with tributaries flowing in, causing ripples in time
Yellowstone 1883 was about the oregon trail in part, i think they stuck the landing in the third iteration
My great-grandfather, having left his Quaker meeting to join the Union Army in 1861, and serving through to Appomattox, left Pennsylvania and moved west, in a wagon, to Lawrence, Kansas.
this curious offering is an attempt to adapt pynchon’s vineland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u-2yB8GJ-Q
talk about paranoia creeping all around,
@physicsguy: [Sasha Stone] gives many example and also brings in the idea of mass psychosis.
Stone specifies that as “mass formation psychosis.”
I’ve run into this term, mass formation psychosis, before. As far as I can tell, it means mob psychology with more syllables and a clinical spin.
My mother suffered amphetamine psychosis and was locked up for several months.
For example, when I once came home from college, she had a massive air purifier rattling away on her bed. She explained that her landlord was putting LSD into the air she was breathing.
When she got out of the hospital, she was still crazy, but she had learned not to express her thoughts out loud to doctors.
Psychosis is a serious word to me.
Something serious has happened to Democrats, as with many mass episodes throughout history. However I wouldn’t describe it as psychosis, as tempting as that might be when applied to one’s opponents.
RE: Our military is in real trouble–
From recent examples, it is glaringly obvious that Obama and Biden dismissed real, conservative war fighters and replaced them, stuffed the military with as many leftists as they could, soldiers and military bureaucrats who could be counted on–the less wary of them–to take the risk to leak to a very sympathetic MSM, to publicly object to, to maliciously comply with, and to outright defy new, traditional and conservative leadership, when it came into office, apparently believing that they would suffer no real repercussions.
It is going to take a lot of work to identify, to root out, and to fire the worst, most influential and dangerous individuals and perhaps, to even have to reshape whole DOD organizations which have been subverted.
Take a look at what this turkey–apparently pretty high up in the DOD table of organization–says, in the clip below.*
* See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/breaking-department-defense-branch-chief-calls-president-trump/
Old Texan–thank you for taking the time to share that wonderful story of your family. Yes, a very different time–not that long ago!
And Neo–thank you for once again expanding my horizons
I agree with huxley that calling the Dems’ delusions “psychosis” makes it hard to distinguish from actual clinical psychosis. But it’s some sort of mass hysteria, akin perhaps to the colonial witch-burning episodes, or to the wild tales of child abuse in day-care centers, which so many believed. You can present people with facts, and they simply refuse to accept them.
Some sort of disturbance but hardly psychosis. I’d say it falls under the heading of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, in this case the result of being lied to and whipped up into fear and hatred.
meanwhile
https://x.com/cdrsalamander/status/1915434826259108106
i know that was another ring of the circus,
Interesting, and coincidental — I have written two novels about pioneers on the California trail, and just this very day I was looking at pictures of Sutter’s fort, as the current WIP concerns the early days of the gold rush.
The historic interpreter is correct, in noting that the wagons were packed tightly with supplies, and not used to ride along in, as well as being pulled by ox teams — not horses, as so often seen in western movies. (Horses were too expensive, and incapable of enduring the hard use of being draft animals on a rough trail. Oxen were for pulling heavy loads, and in a pinch, as emergency food.) The emigrant were without springs and afforded a very rough, bumpy ride. And yes — most of the wagon train pioneers walked. It was slightly inaccurate, though, saying that the western trail emigrants were not well off. Most of them were at least moderately well to do, as they would need to have, or have the wherewithal to purchase a years worth of food supplies, the wagons and the stock – a considerable expense then.
More here – in my retelling of the journey for young readers – https://www.amazon.com/West-Toward-Sunset-Celia-Hayes-ebook/dp/B0DQJT72WP/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=0qssp&content-id=amzn1.sym.bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_p=bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_r=136-1626240-3592226&pd_rd_wg=UAAKa&pd_rd_r=16b9913e-f1d2-439d-865d-37e1858ab49e&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk
Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.
–Virginia Reed, of the Donner Party, later advising a relative coming West
_____________________________
Words to live by.
I’m reading Joan Didion in French and thinking about her. She was old California stock. Didion’s great-great-great-grandmother, Nancy Hardin Cornwall, was part of the Donner Party but left the group before they reached the Sierra Nevada.
Didion was fascinated by the Donner Party from the time she was a child. I wonder if that was a factor in that breathless sense of disaster near at hand which haunts her writing.
Speaking of covered wagons…
_____________________________
Oh, Mary, I have not wrote half of the trouble we’ve had, but I have you wrote you enough to let you know what trouble is is. But thank God, we are the only family which did not eat human flesh…
Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.
–Virginia Reed, of the Donner Party, later advising a relative coming West
–Joan Didion, “Where I Was From”
_____________________________
Words to live by.
I’m reading Joan Didion in French and thinking about her. She was old California stock. Didion’s great-great-great-grandmother, Nancy Hardin Cornwall, was part of the Donner Party but left the group before they reached the Sierra Nevada.
Didion was fascinated by the Donner Party from the time she was a child. I wonder if this was a factor in that breathless sense of disaster near at hand which haunts her writing.
@ Neo > “being whipped up into fear and hatred”
Bumping David Foster’s link from the open thread 4/23
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/73847.html
Good news from Texas:
Texas Senate sends school choice bill to Gov. Abbott’s desk
Senate Bill 2 was passed by the Texas Senate on Thursday.
The bill would allow public money to be used for private or homeschooling.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/school-choice-passes-texas
Will allow approximately 100,000 families to receive funding to send their children to private schools.
Funny how, with Constitutional carry the law in an increasing number of states, there are not rivers of blood flowing in the streets, and the situation is not something like the clip linked below.*
* See https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M6k22BpJvyw
OldTexan,
Thanks for the interesting family history!
Some relations of my mother that had a bad trip.
From Wikipedia
The Sager orphans (sometimes referred to as the Sager children) were the children of Henry and Naomi Sager. In April 1844 the Sager family took part in the great westward migration, taking the Oregon Trail. During the journey both Henry and Naomi died, leaving their seven children orphaned. Later adopted by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, they were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents, as well as brothers John and Francis Sager, were killed during the Whitman massacre in November 1847. About 1860 Catherine, the oldest daughter, wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. Today it is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.”
The whole bitter story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sager_orphans
Thanks, Old Texan, for that account of your families’ travels by wagon. My grandmother and her family may well have rubbed shoulders with them, as they traveled by wagon to Oklahoma and acquired land by participating in the Cherokee Strip land rush of 1893. My grandmother was a young girl of about fifteen at the time. They had a farm near Ponca City and some of the family still live in Oklahoma.
My grandfather’s father was a carpenter with a full set of tools. He could build a house, a barn or furniture – whatever was needed. They traveled by wagon around Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota in the late 1800s.
They ended up in Oklahoma in the early 1900s where my maternal grandparents met and married. They moved to Denver where my grandfather learned to be an electrician. He was hired by F. O. Stanley to help build the Stanley hotel in Estes Park. After the hotel was finished, he worked for Mr. Stanley in building a hydro-electric plant that provided electricity to the hotel and then the town. They lived in Estes Park the rest of their lo lives.
He told me many stories about his youth and traveling by wagon as his father traveled to wherever he got work. I wish I had written it all down. But I was young and didn’t recognize the value of that history he was relating.
Both my grandparents were excellent with horses. It was what they had learned while traveling by wagon as youngsters.
They both lived to fly in a jet airliner too. And they thought it was just a dandy way to travel.
Today a lot of apocalyptic fiction starts out with the loss of electricity. People don’t realize how little time we’ve had electricity
When I was growing up I saw a picture of a couple riding in a horse drawn wagon. These were my great grandparents. I asked my mother where did her grandfather farm, “That’s just how people got around “. My mother’s family lived in Queens.
1908 my dad’s family and several extended families traveled by wagons, pulled by horses, from NW Arkansas to far Western Oklahoma
My mother’s family moved by covered wagon in the 1920s in the same area, Kansas/Oklahoma. In fact, my grandparents on my mother’s side may have met during the Oklahoma land rush — there is a story of wagon with an organ and my grandfather and his sisters dancing. He would have been around six years old.
@ JFM > ” People don’t realize how little time we’ve had electricity”
The ranch where my LDS mission last summer was based didn’t get “wired” electricity until 1970, although they did have gas powered electric generators before then, I don’t know how early.
As for traveling west by wagon, it was posh compared to pulling handcarts!
(The companies did have a complement of support wagons for the food and heavy items.)