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