Gold Rush Brides
"While the young folks were having their good times some of
the mothers were giving birth to their babies. Three babies were
born in our company that summer. My cousin, Emily, gave birth to
a son in Utah, forty miles north of the Great Salt Lake one
morning. But the next morning she travelled on 'til noon when a
stop was made and another child was born, this time Susan
Mollmeyer. And gave the baby the name Alice Nevada."
taken from _Women's Diaries of the Westward Jouney_
by Lillian Schlissel
Follow the typical signs, the hand-painted lines, down prairie roads.
Pass the lone church spire. Pass the talking wire from where to who
knows?
There's no way to divide the beauty of the sky from the wild western
plains. Where a man could drift, in legendary myth, by roaming over
spaces. The land was free and the price was right.
Dakota on the wall is a white-robed woman, broad yet maidenly. Such
power in her hand as she hails the wagon man's family. I see Indians
that
crawl through this mural that recalls our history.
Who were the homestead wives? Who were the gold rush brides? Does
anybody know? Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the
pages
they wrote? The land was free, yet it cost their lives.
In miner's lust for gold, a family's house was bought and sold, piece
by piece. A widow staked her claim on a dollar and his name, so
painfully.
In letters mailed back home her Eastern sisters they would moan as
they
would read accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief.