Three Diaries
Covered Wagon Women: 1851
Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails
Volume IV of "Living Voices from the Past
Edited by Kenneth L. Holmes
Beverly's Ltd. - December 14, 2001
ISBN: 096718853-9 - Audio Cassette
Nonfiction / Memoir

Reviewed by: Jo Rogers, MyShelf.Com
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THREE DIARIES is the fourth volume in the series "Living Voices from the Past." It tells two stories, one from two points of view. The first story is the journey of a wagon train to Oregon from Ohio in 1851. The majority of the story is from the letters of Lucia Williams to her family that remained in Ohio. She, her husband and children made the trip, though not all of them survived. Their ten-year-old son, Johnny, was killed in a freak accident. He was riding in the back of one of their two wagons when a horse that had been tied to the back of the wagon spooked the oxen pulling the wagon, and they ran off. Johnny was thrown from the back of the wagon and killed instantly when one of the wheels ran over his head. It is this incident that was described in greater detail in the diary of Esther Lockhart, another emigrant on the same journey.

The second tale is from the diary of Jean Rio Baker, a Mormon woman who left her home in England to travel to Salt Lake City. She and her family sailed from Liverpool and traveled by windjammer to New Orleans, where they boarded a river boat and went to St. Louis. From there, they went by wagon to Utah, sometimes traveling in a company, sometimes alone.

These stories, and the others in the series tell of the hardships and privations that go with pioneering in the old west. Death was a constant companion, and many did not survive. In this book, as in the others, history is told by those who lived it. It comes alive as we hear the story in their own words

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