10/25/11

Tuesday Travel ~Covered Wagon Tracks

Pioneer Widow Buys Covered Wagon and Mule Team

That would have been a good headline if there had been a newspaper reporter around when my Great Grandmother Martha Jane Marley Carroll loaded up her four children and set off for West Texas in the winter of  1914.

One of those children was my Grandmother Effie Estella.  The following is an excerpt from a story I wrote based on my Great Uncle Mert's (Estella's brother)  recollections of that Covered Wagon Trek.

Martha Jane Makes Homestead Tracks In Texas
Third and Fourth Generations Follow 
When the wind mixes with a driving sleet in West Texas, a cow, a calf and a young girl should be someplace out of the bitter cold. Preferably someplace warm. Stella's thoughts about someplace warm kept her going in the driving sleet. The cow was having a hard time of it, too. Stella could tell by the tension on the rope that kept the mother as close to her newborn as she could get. The calf, barely four hours old, was draped across her saddle sharing the slicker that was doing a passable job of keeping the rain and ice from soaking them both.

Stella looked up just before her horse crossed the road through the gate where the sign was covered in snow and dripping with ice sickles. Just able to make out Wristen Ranch through the blowing sleet and snow, she peered beyond the sign to make out the house and barn down the snow covered wagon rutted tracks. Holding back on the horse so the cow could keep up, she spoke softly to the shivering calf, "Hang on little one, we'll get you warm and fed real soon. Dear god, let there be somebody here who will take us in for the night."
continued on Tracks of My Texas Ancestors
click HERE

Tuesday Travel

5 comments:

  1. Sue, you just can't know how much I am enjoying your genealogy posts. My husband and I are genealogy buffs, too. I am looking forward to us having more time to spend researching.

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  2. I enjoyed that little trip back in time, and to a place that seems so exotic from up here.

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  3. I like your family from another generation feature. I did one similar to yours way back on my grandparents. They also traveled in a wagon from Louisiana to Texas so very long ago.

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  4. Wonderful family stories, Sue and I so enjoy reading them. I look forward to many more.

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  5. I enjoyed reading your graphic account of such a journey.

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