{"id":6325,"date":"2016-08-15T17:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T21:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/?p=6325"},"modified":"2016-08-13T09:51:35","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T13:51:35","slug":"a-pioneer-story-pioneer-days-part-1-the-move-west-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/a-pioneer-story-pioneer-days-part-1-the-move-west-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pioneer Story: Pioneer Days, Part 1, the Move West Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m returning to the memoir written by Laura Denman Booth in her later years, that covered her early life in Ohio and then her married life and moves West starting in the mid-1850s.\u00a0 I was listening to a history podcast, on my commute a month or so ago, which was interviewing an author of a book about his present-day trip on the Oregon Trail<\/a>.\u00a0 This discussion reminded me that I had not completed Laura Denman Booth’s memoir and that the last half or more of it was actually all about her family’s migration across the West in the early days.<\/p>\n

To set the scene: Laura Denman married Joseph W. Booth on November 7 1854, presumably at her parents\u2019 home.\u00a0 She noted that they were married by Professor Munrow with about 40 friends and relatives present.\u00a0 As she remembered at the end of Part I<\/a> of her memories: \u201cOur honey-moon was enjoyed in fitting up our cozy little home in Columbus, where we spent one year of happiness before entering upon our pioneer life\u201d noting that the following chapters of her writing would give the reader some idea of what they faced and endured as they made their way \u201ctoward the setting sun.\u201d.\u00a0 This is the part of Laura\u2019s memoir that justifies her title of A Pioneer\u2019s Story.<\/p>\n

By the Fall of 1855 land fever had gripped many in Ohio (as well as many other places), and Joseph and Laura started looking into moving West.\u00a0 Although Joseph would have liked to go to Kansas, it was very unsettled and dangerous at that time, due to the struggles growing in the country to make slavery legal there.\u00a0 As Laura described it, \u201cJohn Brown was stirring up the people on the subject on slavery\u00a0 and consequently great excitement prevailed, especially as the immigrants to the new territory came from both sections of the country, the North and the South.\u201d\u00a0 Because of the pleadings of friends not to choose to go to Kansas, the young couple decided to investigate Iowa as an option.\u00a0 The northern and western parts of Iowa were still wilderness and it was \u201ca mammoth undertaking to emigrate from Ohio to Iowa\u201d given the possibilities for travel but they persisted and left on \u201ca bright October day\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although Laura didn\u2019t say explicitly in her memoir, it seems very likely that the first legs of their travels were by rail.\u00a0 She also didn\u2019t say anything about what furnishings and possessions they took with them from Ohio.\u00a0 By 1855 the railroads had developed into a very usable form of transportation at least in the East and as far West as Chicago.\u00a0 The young couple said goodbye to his family members in Columbus and then visited some of hers \u201cnear Cleveland\u201d (I assume it was her parents and some of her siblings) before leaving for Chicago.\u00a0 There they visited an old college friend of Laura\u2019s briefly and then her aunt and uncle Townsend in Sycamore Illinois.<\/p>\n

None of these people were named in the memoir but my research shows me that the aunt and uncle were Ann Denman Townsend and her husband Stephen Townsend.\u00a0 The Townsends who had migrated West from the Neversink, New York, \u201cknew something of the pioneer life\u2026having many years before made the journey by wagons\u2026to the wilds of Illinois\u201d.\u00a0 This family was now said to be \u201cliving in prosperity, surrounded by the comforts and luxuries of life.\u00a0 They were reaping the reward of their courage and foresight in coming to this new country when land was cheap and purchasing from the government.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 By 1855 the Stephen Townsend owned more than 100 acres in DeKalb County, Illinois about 50 miles to the west of Chicago.\u00a0 I discovered 4 land patents for Stephen Townsend from between 1845 and 1850 on the Bureau of Land Management website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is with her aunt and uncle that we will leave Laura at this point.\u00a0 As she described, it was at the suggestion of these relatives that \u201cmy husband was induced to leave me to enjoy a more extended visit while he went to spy out the land and make such a location for a home as he thought suitable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m returning to the memoir written by Laura Denman Booth in her later years, that covered her early life in Ohio and then her married life and moves West starting in the mid-1850s.\u00a0 I was listening to a history podcast, …<\/p>\n

A Pioneer Story: Pioneer Days, Part 1, the Move West Begins<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,289,348,349],"class_list":["post-6325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-denman-family","tag-laura-denman-booth","tag-townsend-family","tag-westward-migration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6325"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6332,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6325\/revisions\/6332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}