Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots - Post #13
by Tonya McQuade
In addition to the many Civil Letters I acquired in the box Jeremy sent me (see Blog Post #1) were ten letters from various family members and friends who traveled to California, Oregon, and Washington in the 1850’s and 1860’s. These letters provide some interesting insights into the journey along the Oregon Trail, as well as into what it took to make a life for yourself in these frontier territories and states in the mid-19th century.
My husband Mike and I have made many trips to Sonoma County in northern California over the past twenty years, mostly for wine tasting excursions but also to see Jack London State Historical Park in Glen Ellen and the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. So, when I saw the following letter written from Sonoma County in 1858 by James Calaway Hale’s nephew, Lewis Hale, the son of his brother Charles, I was excited to read what life was like for him and his family in that distant time.
What amazed me most, however, was his description of the journey it took to get there - and the rather “ho hum,” unembellished way he presented it! Here’s the letter he wrote to his family back in Andrew County, Missouri:
State of California, Sonoma County, Petaluma Valley – 29 Jan 1858
Dear uncles and aunts and cousins,
I take my pen in to inform you all that we are all well and hearty at the present time hoping that these few lines will find you all enjoying the same blessings. We would like to see you all but we are a long distance apart. We don’t expect to ever see you all again in this life but hope to meet you all in heaven where parting will be no more.
We all got through to California safe and sound. They was no sickness on the plains. They were two boys killed by the cattle getting scared and taking a stampede. They was a good many killed by the Indians and the robbers. On Goose Creek and Humboldt River they was a small [wagon] train two days ahead of our train. Sixteen in the train – men, women, and children - was all murdered but one woman. She was shot and scalped. She got with a train the same day and got well. She said she stood by and saw her husband and children killed. She travel on down to the sinks of Humboldt. There she had a white man taken up and tried for being with the Indians when her children was killed. He denied it and tried to get away, but in his effort to get away he was shot down dead. They was no danger of big [wagon] trains being interrupted.
They was great losses of stock on the plains - died and stolen. Galant Wrange lost 75 head of cattle – his all died. I lost three steers and one cow. They got poisoned on wild parsnip, we supposed. Pap Heil lost one half of his. I bought three head of cattle on the plains. I paid one hundred and 65 dollars for the three head - one big steer and two heifers 3 years old this next spring. They are fat and soon will give milk - good milk. Cows is worth $75 dollars.
Times is very hard here now - money is scarce. I can’t tell how I will like the country yet. I cannot advise anybody to come to this country although it is a pretty good country - warm and nice, the climate good and agreeable, grass green and growing, farmers plowing and sowing grain. It has rained some this winter, but the most of the time has been pretty weather days - warm nights, little cold, some little frost. Some nights I have rented a place. I am plowing and sowing grain. I am going to put in a lot of potatoes. They pay big sometimes.
I am in Petaluma Valley six miles from the [San Francisco] bay, ten miles from the sea shore. We can hear the waves rolling. We want you all to write. Direct your letter to Sonoma Co., Petaluma, California….
Doctor Birnet has stopped in Petaluma town. They are all well and pleased with the country and climate. Mrs. Birnet had a fine girl on the road. She had it at the sinks of Humboldt. We lay by 2 days and then rolled on, struck the desert the day after, and cross over in half day and one night forty miles without water or grass, ten miles of heavy sand. So the doctor increased in family and decreased in stock. He lost about all of his cattle. It is a long road to travel with an ox team. If I ever was to cross the plains again, I would get a mule team for they stand it better than anything else and go faster.
Galant Wrange is as good a man as ever crossed the plains. He was a friend to the needy - let them have anything they stood in need of, let them have cattle to work and said work them through. If they die, they is nobody’s but old Gallant’s…. Also Judge Croley is well pleased with the country. He has gained his health – he is fat as a hog…. Samuel Heil is not well. I am afeard (afraid) he never will be stout any more. I seen a letter from John Ray. He is well. He is in the mines.
I haven’t made as much as I have spent. I made 3 hundred rails. I got 5 dollars per hundred. It was two days and a half making them – made them out of redwood. This redwood is the best splitting timber that I ever have seen in my life. I saw a redwood tree that was 28 feet across the stump. It is on this side of the Sierra Mountains on the big tree route that is the best way across the mountain.
William Maul, that big tree I saw is timber enough in it to keep you coopering till you are gray as a rat. So come and see the tree. The coopers trade is no one here. The redwood timber can be cut into shingles – they are worth 3 dollars per thousand. So come on Uncle Meshach with your machine. Timber don’t cost anything.
I will bring my letter to a close, so no more but remains our love to you all. We send our respects to all inquiring friends if any.
Lewis Hale, Louisa J. Hale, Nancy E. Hale, and Charles S. Hale to all
I deleted some of the name references in the letter above - I’m not sure who many of the people mentioned are. Others, however, I was able to track down and add to my family tree - including Lewis Hale himself, who I had not previously added to my tree since I have often chosen NOT to include all the siblings, nieces, and nephews since it can make the tree overly cumbersome to navigate.
These letters inspired me to add MANY names to that side of the family tree so I could try to figure out as many of the people being discussed as possible. I also learned that the “Humboldt Sink” mentioned in the letter is an intermittent dry lake bed, approximately eleven miles long and four miles across, in northwestern Nevada in the United States. The body of water in the sink is known as Humboldt Lake.
I wish “Uncle Meshack,” my great-great-great grandfather James Calaway Hale’s brother, would have taken Lewis up on that invitation to join him in California, where the plentiful redwood would have helped him out in his coopering business. If he had, he would not have been in Missouri in 1861 to get killed by Confederate sympathizers (see Blog Post #10). His wife Jane and son William, who fortunately escaped injury, later decided to make the move to the West Coast as part of the Kennedy Wagon Train … but more on that next time.
Check back Thursday to see excerpts from Jane and William's letters to the family back in Missouri.
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