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to Do History: Children in History
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Children
Steven
Mintz
WESTWARD
JOURNEY
D.B.
Ward, 1913
It was
a long, long journey, full of grave responsibility to the older members
of the family. But for me, a lad of fifteen, it was the most interesting
six months' period of my life.
Florence
Weeks
Gathering
buffalo chips was Ester's and my job. We were rather finicky about
it at first, but found they were as dry as a chip of wood. We had
a basket with a handle on each side to carry them.
Homer
Thomas, an eight year old from Illinois, to his grandmother
On the
Platte, the musquitoes half eat us up, & it was hot as fire, &
mighty dustry. I am mighty glad you didn't come with us, young could
not [have] stood it, for it was mighty hard for me to stand. If I
had known what this kind of a country and so long a road it was, I
bet you I never would have come out here to see Virginia City.
FRONTIER CHILDHOOD
Isabella
Bird
One of
the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is the
extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children, only debased
imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and
asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten
years old. The atmosphere in which they are brought up is one of greed,
godlessness, and frequently profanity.
Diary
entry of a 12 year old girl in Helena, Montana, in 1865:
At two
o'clock in the morning a highway Robber was hung on a large pine tree.
After breakfast we went to see him. At ten o'clock preaching, at one
o'clock a large auction sale of horses and cattle. At two o'clock
Sunday school. At three o'clock a foot race. At seven o'clock preaching.
The remainder of the time spent by hundreds of miners in gambling
and drinking.
ORPHAN
TRAINS
We were
three days and two nights getting out to Nebraska. They took out the
seats and put them back crossways to make beds.... We had milk and
bread and red-jelly sandwiches three meals a day.... To this day,
I don't eat jelly.
Margarent
Braden:
They
put us all on a big platform...while people came from all around the
countryside to pick out those of us they wished to take home.
Quoted
in Holt, Orphan Trains, 41, 59-60 |
