Category: Diary of Little Germaine

I have not written yet about Grandma and Grandpa. Neither of them speak very much English, and I have not known them for very long. They came out to Missouri from Vermont with Uncle Luke about a year ago, I think. Mama says I met them a long time ago when I was a baby, when they came down to Virginia to visit, but I don’t remember it. Grandma has taught me a little bit of French, and I practice it with her when she is riding in our wagon. She usually has Josephine with her, because Josephine is only two years old, and needs a lot of care. Grandma does a lot of the cooking. She says that it gives her a break from Josephine. Grandpa does not get on well with Papa. He says, “Your Papa is ob-steen-ay.” I think that means he is stubborn. The truth is…

A new family joined us, and now there are seven wagons in our little company and 26 people.  1. Papa’s wagon with Mama, me and Annabelle.  2. Uncle Luke and Aunt Marie’s wagon which has Grandma and Grandpa, although they sometimes ride with us. Also little Luke and Josephine, and Aunt Marie’s brother, Jean.  3. Mr. and Mrs. Bradford, with Celia and Tommy.  4. Sally McCoy, a widow woman, and her son Liam, who is 15. 5. The Hedricks, with Peter, Barbara, and Eva. 6. Will Applegate. 7. Mr. and Mrs. Pembrook and their daughter Nancy. This is the newest family. Mrs. Pembrook is pregnant, like Mama. Mama thinks that Papa filled Mr. Pembrook’s head with unnecessary, fearful notions about the Indians we will meet, and she reprimanded him in a sharp tone after the meeting. We traveled 11 miles today.

The adults had another meeting today. They fought again. I could hear Papa and Mr. Bradford yelling at one another, and then Mr. Hedrick and Uncle Luke started yelling, and Mama left crying again. We tried to comfort her, but she insisted that she was fine. It turns out that they were arguing over a young man who asked to join our group. His name is Will Applegate, and Papa says that he is a fool, and will cause no end of problems for us. The grown-ups voted to let him stay with us, despite Papa’s misgivings, and he introduced himself to us children after the meeting. He has a small printing press, which is called a letter press. He says he will start a newspaper in Oregon, like the one he worked for in Independence. The printing press is the cause of Papa’s dissatisfaction. Papa says, “It is an…

This morning we turned away from the Missouri River, and will follow the Little Blue River up to The Platte. The shocking thing I learned this morning while I helped Uncle Luke yoke the oxen is that we will be just a small part of a much larger wagon train which has left from Council Bluff, in Iowa. We will meet up with them at Ft. Kearney in a few weeks. Uncle Luke says that we can travel about ten or fifteen miles on a very good day, if there are flat roads. He has asked me if I would read the odometer each day and record it in this diary, so I shall try to remember. Today we traveled about 8 miles. After we reach Scotts Bluff, and the prairie comes to an end, it will be much slower. Then there will be mountains and rivers to ford and…