Oregon Trail online archives

[Jeffrey Kopp]

On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 22:01:49 -0500, "Dave Robertson"
<tuktiwawa at NETSCAPE.NET> wrote:

>http://www.isu.edu/~trinmich/00.n.dairies.html
>
>This is the address of an online archive of actual diaries, journals and
>other documents written by veterans of the Oregon Trail.
>
>Though I haven't looked through it yet, I'm sure there are things there that
>will be of interest to everyone on this list.  As a favor, if you find good
>stuff at that site, would you please report back to us here about it?
>
>Hyas mahsie, pe kloshe polaklie,
>Dave


A bit to add, and a personal note:  On page
http://www.isu.edu/~trinmich/00.ar.akin.html is the terse but
complete 1852 trail diary kept by 19-year-old James Akin, Jr.  Four
related Methodist families (Akin, Booth, Ingram and Richey) from
Henry County, Iowa made this trip together.  My
great-great-grandfather Robert A. Booth, his wife and four children
were in this party.  The Akin diary is the only record of this party
known to have been made on the trail.  

Ten adults and 29 children formed the 40-wagon train (not including
the Kuykendall party, who joined them at the Missouri crossing).
They left Salem, Iowa on April 15, reached the Cascades on October
15, and arrived in Portland a few days later.

Two women and four children died of illness along the way, including
young Akin's mother.  (See August 22; his father died within weeks of
arriving in Portland, as well.)  All of the Booth family were spared,
though there was one cholera scare among them.

Booth came to America from England in 1830 at the age of 10.  The
1852 trek was his second trip across the continent.  He first came
overland in 1850 to the gold fields of California.  Returning home in
1851 by ship from San Francisco, he was stranded when his ship was
becalmed, and had to walk across the isthmus of Panama to await
another ship.

After returning to the West with his family, he settled in the
Willamette Valley and became a minister.  Rev. Booth served as one of
the "circuit riders" of the Methodist frontier church system, first
in the Willamette Valley, then in southern Oregon.  He and Mary Minor
Booth had seven more children after coming to Oregon.

One of the later Trail immigrants, Booth lived to 97, and his death
in 1917 was marked by many as the passing of Oregon's pioneer era.  A
mounted statue of him, commemorative of all the frontier ministry,
stands on the Capitol grounds in Salem.

The Booth details above come from family papers.  Details of the 1852
trail trip came from "The Oregon Trail Diary of James Akin, Jr. in
1852," Webb Research Group (Medford, OR 1998), which includes the
Akin diary along with annotations, letters, and genealogy.  For those
interested in Trail diaries, they offer a selection of 16 similar
modestly-priced books.  I purchased the Akin diary for $7.50 + $2.50
shipping.  http://www.pnorthwestbooks.com/docs/or_trail.html

The web site containing the diaries which Dave mentions is at Idaho
State U, presented by Prof. Mike Trinklein and Steve Boettcher,
creators of the PBS series "The Oregon Trail."  Besides the page of
six diaries (two by women), the site also includes seven memoirs of
trail trips, and the full text of five period books including Francis
Parkman's "The Oregon Trail," the War Department's "Prairie Traveler:
A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions," and Horace Greeley's "An
Overland Journey." 
http://www.isu.edu/~trinmich/00.n.trailarchive.html

Regards,

Jeffrey Kopp