Long wagon trains of families trekked across the plains, doing all they could to stay together in order to help each other. But even with all her responsibilities, she found time to write in her diary about the “beautiful vallies, and dark green clad hills, with their ledges of rock, and then far away over them you can see Larimie peak, with her snow capt top…”Įven with all the hardships, Amelia’s story wasn’t much different from most of the folks traveling the Oregon Trail. Yes, she was pregnant with her eighth child during her time on the Oregon Trail. Scrubbing and mending clothes, keeping watch over her seven children, preparing meals for her family of eight, (soon to be nine), and the five hired hands that traveled with them. Sick or well, Amelia had chores to do and they were endless. Sometimes Amelia Stewart Knight and her family had to sleep “in wet beds, with their wet clothes on, without supper.” Dreary times, wet and muddy, and crowded in the tent, cold and wet and uncomfortable in the wagon no place for the poor children …” ![]() (April 23, 1853) “Still in camp, it rained hard all night, and blew a hurricane almost, all the tents were blown down, and some wagons capsized, Evening it has been raining hard all day, everything is wet and muddy, One of the oxen missing, the boys have been hunting him all day. In her diary she recorded her daily events in an unadorned fashion, describing what it was like to travel the Oregon Trial: As it turned out, that spring was especially rainy and the heavy wagon wheels kept bogging down in the many soft mudholes along the way. ![]() The trip to Oregon would take at least four months there were barren landscapes and tricky mountain passes to get through. Amelia Stewart Knight knew the cross-country journey west would be a rough one it was not for the weak or timid.
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