By James E. Kerns

(Tracing the women of one inter-connected family line from the frontier of one coast to the frontier of the other)

Marriage is a partnership of two equal halves whose sum is greater than one.  The two partners working together can accomplish much more than the two could accomplish or become by working alone.  Sometimes, however, our female ancestors found themselves alone, and had to rely upon their own strength and inner resources while their men were absent.

Such was the case with Elizabeth Harrison Johnson who bid her husband good-bye as he went off to serve in the Revolutionary War.  What anxieties did she feel as she wondered if she'd ever see him again, and as she wondered if she had the ability to care for their young children as well as for the farm in his absence?  To what horrors and hardships would he be subjected?  How would she sow and harvest the crops, milk the cow, bake the bread, have enough firewood for warmth through the winter and for cooking all year 'round?  How would she cook the meals, make and wash the clothes, do the butchering, make the candles, handle the illnesses, teach the children, and keep the house and farm running?  What would she do for protection?  There would be no phone calls for comfort or for news of her husband.  There would be no letters either, since there was no mail service.  And there would be no government assistance since there was no government.

Martha Patsey Cutler Johnson moved with her husband from Virginia to the wilds of Ohio in 1816.  There were no roads.  They had to cut a roadway through the wilderness as they proceeded.  The family had to carry the contents of their wagon across logs over a swollen creek, and then swim the horses across with the empty wagon.  At another time they came to a steep place, which they could not avoid, and were compelled to take the wagon apart and carry it down piece by piece with the household goods to level ground.

When within about 12 miles of their destination, Martha's husband became impatient at their slow progress, loaded what goods he could on the horses, left his eldest son in charge of the wagon, and took his family through the woods to a cabin that he'd built some months earlier in preparation.  The cabin was simply a structure consisting of four log walls and a roof.  It had no door, no windows, no floor, and no fireplace.  Arriving at the cabin, they cut out two or three logs for a door, moved their goods inside, and built a fire in the middle of the floor.  The smoke escaped through the cracks in the walls since there was no chimney.  Martha's husband then went back to retrieve the wagon, leaving Martha and the young children alone.

During the night one of the children had an attack of the croup.  Water was required.  The spring was some distance away through the dark woods.  The nine-year-old girl was dispatched to get it.  They were thick, dark woods infested with wild animals.  All her life she would remember her swift, and terrified return with the bucket of water.

 

Martha left a large, dependent posterity when she died in 1823.  Who would care for her 10 children?  On her deathbed she directed her husband to remarry, and named Fanny McDaniel as the woman that he should marry, and to whom she could feel good about entrusting her children.

Mary Powers Dunbar found herself alone with her five children one day when the Indians set fire to the prairie in Indiana.  They did it to run the game out for their fall hunt.  Mary's log cabin was on fire.  The fire burned the bark from the logs, but she and the children were able to extinguish the flames by using the water from the barrel that had just been hauled from Potato Creek the previous day.  She and the children survived the fire by their own hard work and pluck.  But nothing was able to save Mary later when she died in childbirth with her 16th child.  Medical science on the frontier was non-existent.

Calista Jane Danner married John Wesley Miler.  That was in Iowa in March of 1863.  They were a young couple in love, and looking forward to an exciting, happy future together. —But there was to be no future.  He had to leave his bride to fight in the Civil War.  Just sixteen months after their marriage he was killed by a bullet from a Rebel rifle.  Calista was left with a 3-1/2 month-old son that her husband never got to see.  Calista taught school to support herself and her son.  She married one of her students.

Calista's daughter, Lora, was a ranch wife in Wyoming.  There were no other habitations visible from her isolated ranch home.  Plenty of Indians came through, however.  Lora and her husband were on good terms with the Indians, who were friendly, who camped in their barn lot when they came through, and who were grateful for the lump-jawed cows that Lora and Jim would give them to butcher.

Lora had no electricity, no running water, no telephone, and had to raise and make all of the family's food except for a few staples that were bought during a yearly or twice-yearly trip to town.  A big garden supplied the family with produce.  Food was stored, smoked, dried and canned.  Canning was difficult because there were no jars nor canning lids.  Lora was resourceful, however.  Whenever her men folk left to ride the range or to go to town she reminded them to keep a lookout for whiskey bottles.  These were the prizes they brought back to her.  Lora would soak a string in paraffin, wrap it tightly around the bottle below the neck, set the string on fire, and would then tap the top of the bottle, which action would produce a nice, clean break where the string had been.  The bottles were then filled with jams and fruits, and were preserved by covering them with melted paraffin.  Other whiskey bottles were kept intact, and were used for making and storing vinegar.

One day when the men were gone for a week helping a neighbor with threshing, Lora was down in the dark, underground cellar that she called "the cave" where she stored all of her canned goods.  The doorway was suddenly darkened by a fierce-looking Indian brave whom Lora didn't recognize.

"Firewater," the Indian said.

Lora said, "No got."

The Indian said, "Me Bad Wolf, killum white squaw no give um firewater."  On the shelf near him he could see whiskey bottles, so he knew the white woman had firewater.

"Help yourself," Lora said to Bad Wolf.  He removed the top, took a swig, choked and spat, and heard the white woman saying angrily, " Now git, and don't you stop gitting until you come to the reservation gate."

He got.

 

Lora's courage in her Indian encounters was no more than that required of Maria Eakin McCornack as she negotiated the treacherous and untamed Columbia River without her husband.  They had come to the Oregon Territory in 1853 after a long and tedious journey across the Oregon Trail.  They did it with five little boys, ages 8 to 1.  The journey was made even more difficult when the one-year-old baby contracted polio, the effects of which he dealt with all his life.

At that early day there was no way for wagons to go down the Columbia River Gorge and complete the journey to the Willamette Valley.  Wagons had to be unloaded, and their goods put into boats that might or might not be able to negotiate the dangerous rapids of the river.  Most often these were Indian boats, piloted by Chinook Indians.

Upon reaching that point in their journey, Maria and her husband judged that the best course of action would be for him to go on ahead to the Olympia area where he could prepare a home for the family who would follow along as best and as rapidly as they could.  Maria thus put herself, her goods, and her children in the care of several Indian boatmen.  The Indians noticed the chamber pot that she had for the family's use.  In the morning she found the Indians cooking breakfast in it.  She protested its use in this manner, but the Indians assured her in their limited English that they would take good care of it.  She cooked over a campfire for her family on the riverbank at night, and camped with the Indians.  They took her safely through the rapids and around Celilo Falls.  At the end of the trip they proudly presented back to her the unharmed chamber pot, and left her to find her own way from the Columbia River up to the Olympia country where she hoped to find her husband.

History is generally written around the accomplishments and from the viewpoints of men.  Equally compelling are the hardships and the viewpoints of the women.  It was they who, even more than the men, shaped what their descendants are today.  What a priceless thing it would be to have the journals and the viewpoints of these courageous women who are our ancestors.