Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots - Post #16
by Tonya Graham McQuade
After reading Jane Kennedy Hale’s letters to the Hale family back in Andrew County Missouri (see Posts #14 and 15), I was curious to learn more about the Oregon Trail, especially some of the places she mentioned in her letters, including Big Platte, Fort Laramie, the Mormon Trail, Pike’s Peak, and "the mines." While I knew the story of the Donner Party and had visited Donner Memorial State Park and Museum in Truckee, California; had played “The Oregon Trail” computer game when I was younger (that taught us all some history, right?); and had seen movies depicting wagon trains (“Silverado” and "One More Mountain" come to mind), I realized my knowledge was in reality fairly limited.
So, imagine my excitement when I learned there was actually a book written about the particular wagon train with which Jane had traveled - and that her own brother was its leader! The book, Train of Innocents: The Story of the Kennedy Train, by Everell Cummins (published in 2005), is largely based on diaries kept by two members - James McClung and Hamilton Scott - of the Kennedy train, as well as later memoirs and news stories written by and about some of the other members of the train. I actually tried to contact the author - then sadly discovered he had died in 2019.
As described in Train of Innocents, Jane’s brother, Captain John Knox Kennedy, was born in Greene County, Tennessee, in 1811 - that's the same place many of the Hales (including my great-great grandmother Mary Ann) were born, so I'm guessing the families knew each other from way back. Captain Kennedy and his first wife, Sarah Steele, had five children, some born in Indiana and some in Illinois. Sarah died in 1845, and in 1848 - after being honorably discharged from his service in the Mexican-American War and being rewarded with land in Wapello County, Iowa - Captain Kennedy remarried a widow named Sarah "Sally" McGuire Stoots/Stotts, who had three daughters and a son. Together, while living in Iowa, they had one son - John H.C. Kennedy. Several of the Kennedy and Stoots/Stotts children were part of the Kennedy Train.
While serving in the Mexican War in 1847 under Lt. Col. Ludwell E. Powell, whose “battalion was given the job of establishing military posts along the overland trail to Oregon and California, Kennedy participated in establishing a post on the Platte River” (Cummins 20). During the California gold rush in 1849, he traveled with two neighbors on the overland trail to California before returning to Iowa and moving his family to Mahaska County, where he served as county sheriff for two years, as well as a captain in the Iowa state militia. In 1859, Kennedy once again traveled west, this time to visit a cousin in Washington Territory, and after seeing the “empty, fertile land await[ing] settlement,” he decided to move his family west (Cummins 22).
According to Cummins, Kennedy’s “background in the military and in law enforcement, as well as his experience handling livestock and his familiarity with the trail west all helped persuade his neighbors to go with him” (Cummins 22). And so, a group of about a dozen set off from Fremont, Iowa, on April 24, 1862, determined to establish new lives in Walla Walla and other areas of Oregon and Washington. The recently-widowed Jane Kennedy Hale and her son William Simpson, age 12, were among them, and other wagons joined their train as they traveled along the Missouri River. By the time they left Omaha, Nebraska, the Kennedy train totaled "52 wagons, manned by 222 men, women and children" (Cummins 17).
In her letter to the family back in Andrew County, Missouri, Jane wrote the following on June 2, 1862, from the Nebraska Territory (see full letter in Post #14):
I take my pen in hand to let you know that we are all well at this time, thanks be to god for his mercy. Hoping these few lines find you all in the same state of health. We are traveling on the north side of Big Platte. We are within twenty-five miles of Fort Laramie, and we will go not far from there. It is on the other side of the Platte River. There is fifty wagons in this train, and my brother John Kennedy is captain of the company. I never saw the like in my life of people going to Oregon and to Pike’s Peak. You cannot see from the one end of the train to the other, they say. There are nine hundred Mormons on the other side of the river.
So, my first question was, what (and where) is Big Platte?
Here’s what I learned from two different historical markers in Nebraska (with thanks to the unknown photographers of these markers):
Inscription: “The trail which followed the south side of the Platte River was the main route to Oregon and California. Fur traders going to the Rocky Mountains took the first wagons over the trail in 1830. Oregon-bound missionaries followed in the mid-1830s, and the first group of settlers embarked for Oregon in 1841. The number of emigrants reached 40,000 in 1849 after gold was discovered in California. Most emigrants traveled in ox-drawn wagons averaging about fifteen miles a day. In the 1850s and 1860s, freight wagons and stagecoaches carrying passengers and mail used the road. From April 1860 until October 1861, the Pony Express carried mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. Fort Kearny (1848-1871), east of here, provided protection and supplies for travelers. Supplies could also be purchased at nearby Dobytown. One of many road ranches along the Oregon-California trail was located just southeast of this marker. Wagon travel on this overland route declined following the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.”
Inscription: “Here is the great Platte Valley, Highway to the West. On these nearby bluffs prehistoric Indians built their homes. The Pawnee and Oto established large earthlodge villages near here. As you travel west in the valley you will follow the route of the Indians, white explorers, and the early trails to the western United States. In 1820, an exploring party under Major Stephen Long followed the Platte Valley to the Rocky Mountains, as did an 1826 expedition under General William Ashley. By 1830, the valley had become the major supply route for fur traders in the Rocky Mountains. Beginning in 1847, the Mormons on their way to Utah followed a trail along the north side of the Platte. The Oregon Trail reached the Platte 150 miles west of here and followed the south side of the river. By the late 1850's, it was estimated that 90% of all traffic which crossed the Plains followed the Platte. The famous Pony Express followed the Platte Valley, as did the first transcontinental telegraph line. By 1869, the first transcontinental railroad was completed and it, too, followed the valley, opening the land along the river for permanent settlement.”
My second question was, what is the history of Fort Laramie?
Well, it turns out, Fort Laramie has a big history - and it is now a National Historic Site in Wyoming. According to the nps.gov website:
“Located at the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte Rivers in southeast Wyoming, this famed outpost - first as a fur trade post and then as a military garrison - played a strategic role in transforming the United States. Here, for 56 years successive waves of trappers, traders, Native Americans, missionaries, emigrants, soldiers, miners, ranchers and homesteaders interacted and left their mark on a place that would become famous in the history of the American west - Fort Laramie….
“In 1849, the U.S. Army offered to purchase Fort John as part of a plan to establish a military presence along the emigrant trails. The owners of the Fort agreed to the sale, and on June 26, the post was officially renamed Fort Laramie, and it began its tenure as a military post. The Army quickly constructed new buildings for stables, officers' and soldiers' quarters, a bakery, a guardhouse, and a powder magazine to house and support the fort garrison.
“As the years went by, the post continued to grow in size and importance. Fort Laramie soon became the principal military outpost on the Northern Plains. Fort Laramie also became the primary hub for transportation and communication through the central Rocky Mountain region as emigrant trails, stage lines, the Pony Express, and the transcontinental telegraph all passed through the post.”
The Kennedy train reached Fort Laramie, about 30 miles inside what is now Wyoming, on June 22, 1862. There, they camped on the other side of the Platte River from the fort, and "the company devoted the principal part of the day in writing letters to friends [they] left behind," according to James McClung's diary (Cummins 34). Jane's letter, from which I quoted above, was written over a period of several weeks, with the last date listed being June 20, so it's likely she mailed this letter from Fort Laramie.
According to Fort Laramie NHS: Park History, "Much of our knowledge of Fort Laramie in the 1850s is derived from journals and letters kept by a surprising number of emigrants themselves. Indeed, to a very large extent the history of the fort during this period is essentially its unique role in serving, in various ways, this transient population during its Exodus from 'the States,' across the vast wilderness known vaguely as Indian Territory, to 'the Promised Land.' Fort Laramie was between 600 and 700 miles from the various Missouri River 'jumping-off places,' the exact distance depending on whether your point of origin was the Council Bluffs area (including Omaha after 1854), Table Rock (later Nebraska City), St. Joseph. or Independence, Missouri. While Fort Kearny on the Platte, where all trails converged, was viewed as the gateway to the Great Plains, Fort Laramie, with Laramie Peak looming in the distance, was looked upon as the gateway to the Mountains. Here one left the relatively level North Platte Valley of Nebraska and embarked on more rugged terrain, climbing toward South Pass on the Continental Divide. For many the brave little post on the Laramie was the only civilized place encountered between Fort Kearny and the West Coast" (PDF 21).
Fort Laramie was also the first place the travelers could receive mail, and as McClung described, "At 3:00 PM the mail came and, as every one was anxious of course to get a letter, they was all on hand awaiting here. We heard from the old stomping ground for the first time, which placed anew the recollection of all that was near and dear which we left behind" (Cummins 34).
I wonder if Jane and William received any letters. I hope so. I cannot imagine what they must have felt, leaving behind all they knew and heading to an unknown land to begin a new life, without a husband or father to help them in that undertaking. The one year anniversary of Jane's husband Meshack's murder by Confederate sympathizers passed during that month of June when Jane wrote the letter - and she had also lost her daughter Harriet (b. 1837) sometime before 1862 (I have not been able to find a death date). Jane expressed concern in her letter about not having had the money to purchase headstones for them before she left Missouri - I hope that is something that the family back in Missouri finally took care of.
My third and fourth questions were, why were the Mormons on the other side of the river, and why were so many people going to Pike's Peak? Those turned out to be questions needing longer responses, and I'll tackle them in my next couple posts.
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