A little perspective: How many you reckon of our great great grandparents braved the Oregon Trail?

Since I find my GGGrandfather on the 1850 census in a California gold camp it is safe to assume one did from our family. Passage on a ship would have been unobtainable. He was a settler traveling the surge West with nothing much beyond what he wore. Such were his circumstances as were a huge proportion of others. The vast majority of minors of that era reached the fields and a hard life there via the Oregon Trail.

It might be of interest to note as the Coronavirus descends upon us that our forefathers faced at least as frightening of threats under far worse conditions.

Cholera, diphtheria, measles, and typhoid, contributed to perhaps 30,000 deaths along the Oregon trail. Ten to fifteen dead for every mile of that 2,000 plus mile trek! Whereupon perhaps 400,000 hardy individuals made the journey between 1836 and 1869 before the transcontinental railroad was completed the heaviest travel was from 1843 - 69 although families without means continued into the 80s. That would be a whole lot of white markers wouldn't it? That means these folks began when Indians still successfully contested encroachment and when Buffalo were still so thick they could swamp a train in a stampede. They fought mud and wind and floods and rivers and conditions so dry stock and people perished. I mean come on, there was more than one incident where people actually ate each other. It was hard enough that many hardened settler lost their mind on that trek.

As for Cholera, a mother, father, child, or a lone traveler, might begin a day feeling completely healthy, breaking camp and trudging off beside their family's wagon that morning as if it were any other, to be placed in a shallow grave along the trail by nightfall. That is how quickly Cholera could take its victim. And that was just one disease.

Of course there were more than disease to claim your life as you mostly ‘walked’ anywhere from four to six months on slim rations - throwing away much of what you cherished and packed in your hopeful beginning. All that - yet the challenges would only just begin upon arrival.

Does this Country have great stories or what!

Buck-up Countrymen… we’ll come out the other side… with bruises for sure, that's true enough. But lets ignore the haters and blamers and just set our jaw and get it done in a way that makes us all look back with a lot of relief its over - and a whole lot more pride in how we managed. Lets live up to those rascals who brought us here.

And when we do, remember the opportunists. I know hostiles no longer wear war-paint but it's really not all that hard to see who they are!

You see, the only place your life is harder now than your forebear's is in that your "hostiles" are now in your midsts. They look like you. You actually have to work a little to ferret out the truth but it is there. They don't wear war-paint or speak a different language and they don't come at you honorably or boldly with weapons but work crafty with deceit and lies and strategy to gain the Commanding Heights necessary to tell lies often enough to make them truths. So, yeah, when I say Buck-up, I mean it.

btw, what ever happened to Ol Kennerly, my Great Great? Well 38 years after that 1850 census he and his wife and an infant-child died of a Yellow Fever - part of an epidemic that periodically swept the countryside. They were holed up along the Red River between the Indian Territories and Texas waiting for high water to subside so they could get a herd of stock across into Texas. They left five older children orphaned, from 15 to 4 years old. My grandmother's daddy was a 12 yr old, right in the middle of that young crew. Those five made their way 40 miles to a large cattle concern where the 15 year old got a job and the 4 yr old was allowed to stay in the house, even if she was not appreciated or treated well. Times must have been getting easier because they all survived into adulthood.