My love of reading the stories people tell about their lives led me to this book about the great migration to Oregon and California between 1840 and 1870 as told by women who kept diaries. We see passages like this one, by Abby E. Fulkerath, “Agreeable to the wish of my husband, I left all my relatives in Ohio . . . & started on this long & . . . perilous journey . . . . it proved a hard task to leave them but still harder to leave my children buried in . . . graveyards.” Often portrayed as a “heroic adventure,” this journey was for many women a time of anguish, hardship, and loss.
Schlissel, Lillian. Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. Schocken Books, 1982, p.28.