Emigrants preparing for the move to Oregon had plan carefully what they would take. They had to balance the amount of food and other supplies they needed for the journey, what they could afford to buy, the weight their wagon and teams could pull, and what mementoes and tools they […]
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A Novel Blog Hop: Lead Me Home
J.G. Burdette, who blogs at Map of Time: A Trip into the Past, tagged me to participate in a Blog Hop for authors. What’s a blog hop? This one is an interview with ten questions posed to a writer about the novel he or she is writing. The author answers […]
Continue readingWeaving Threads of History into Story
In February 1847, while the Donner party struggled to survive in the snows of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Elizabeth Dixon Smith and her family prepared to leave Indiana for Oregon, a baby was born in Denmark – my paternal great-great-grandfather Charles N. Claudson. (I’m told his last name in […]
Continue readingThe Donner Party: Don’t Take Shortcuts and Hurry Along
One of the more sensational stories of the Oregon Trail is that of the Donner party, the group of emigrants to California in 1846 who were lost in snows in the Sierra Nevada mountains from November 1846 until March 1847, and allegedly resorted to cannibalism. As soon as their story […]
Continue readingAccidents on the Oregon Trail: Catherine Sager Pringle
This past week, while I’ve been caring for my daughter with a broken leg, I’ve thought about the injuries the pioneers to Oregon suffered on their journey. Accidents and disease were much greater risks to the emigrants than Indians, despite what we see in Western movies. One of every seventeen […]
Continue readingPreparing for the Trip to Oregon: Keturah Belknap
Last year I posted several times about travel along the Oregon Trail in 1847, the year in which the novel I am working on takes place. (Click here and here for samples, or search this blog for “Oregon Trail.”) Several readers have asked what I’m going to do in 2013. My […]
Continue readingChristmas Traditions in the Late 1840s
Because the emigrants in my first Oregon Trail novel traveled between April and October, I didn’t have to write about their Christmas celebrations in that book. But the sequel covers a three-year time span, so as I work on this draft, I am learning about Christmas traditions in the late […]
Continue readingThe Travails of Elizabeth Dixon Smith Geer
As I wrote in my last post about the Oregon Trail, the emigrants wanted to get to Oregon before the winter weather set in. Most travelers arrived by the end of October, but some were not so lucky. One of the unfortunate travelers was Elizabeth Dixon Smith Geer. Elizabeth kept […]
Continue readingOregon City: End of the Trail
If the emigrants on the Oregon Trail were fortunate, they reached Oregon City in the Willamette Valley sometime in October – about six months after they began their journey from what was then the United States. The dangers of their trek continued even through the last weeks, when the travelers […]
Continue readingWhitman Mission
I mentioned in an earlier post that I wrestled with whether to set my Oregon Trail novel in 1847 or 1848. I decided on 1847, because I wanted my characters to stop at the Whitman Mission. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, early pioneers to the Oregon Territory, were killed by Cayuse […]
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