William Smedley - Across the Plains: An 1862 Journey from Omaha to Oregon
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Across the Plains: An 1862 Journey from Omaha to Oregon
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Across the Plains : An 1862 Journey From Omaha to Oregon
author
:
Smedley, William.; Mattes, Merrill J.
publisher
:
Johnson Books
isbn10 | asin
:
1555661238
print isbn13
:
9781555661236
ebook isbn13
:
9780585020785
language
:
English
subject
Smedley, William,--1836-1926--Diaries, Pioneers--West (U.S.)--Diaries, West (U.S.)--Description and travel, Overland journeys to the Pacific, Oregon National Historic Trail.
publication date
:
1994
lcc
:
F594.S65 1994eb
ddc
:
917.804/33/092
subject
:
Smedley, William,--1836-1926--Diaries, Pioneers--West (U.S.)--Diaries, West (U.S.)--Description and travel, Overland journeys to the Pacific, Oregon National Historic Trail.
1994 by Nelson Giesecke
Cover and text design: Margaret Donharl
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smedley, William, 1836-1926 [Across the Plains in '62] Across the plains : an 1862 journey from Omaha to Oregon / William Smedley; foreword by Merrill J. Mattes. p. cm. Originally published: Across the plains in '62. Denver, Colo., 1916. ISBN 1-55566-123-8 1. West (U.S.)-Description and travel. 2. Overland journeys to the Pacific. 3. Oregon Trail. 4. West (U.S.) History-1860-1890. 5. Smedley, William, 1836-1926 Diaries. 6. Pioneers-West (U.S.)-Diaries. I. Title. F594.S65 1994 917.804'33'092-dc20
[B]
93-49833 CIP
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Printed in the United States of America by Johnson Printing Company 1880 South 57th Court Boulder, Colorado 80301
Page v
In 1862, William Smedley, a twenty-six-year-old school teacher originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania, embarked from Illinois on one of his life's great adventures. With apparently little forethought, he set out to cross the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains and travel to Oregon. The yellowed pages of the diary he kept of this trek were first published by his family in 1916.
Over the years, the little book became a treasured keepsake for William Smedley's growing number of descendants, and passages from it were frequently read at family weddings, christenings, and funerals. Our long association with Carl Blaurock, one of Colorado's eminent mountaineers and first cousin of Max Gieseckewho was William Smedley's son-in-lawintroduced us to the Smedley family. Nelson Giesecke, Max's grandson, asked us if the diary had a market outside of the family. We read it with great interest and answered with an enthusiastic "yes!"
Distinguished Western historian Merrill J. Mattes, recognized authority on the interpretation of diaries by emigrants following both sides of the Platte, agreed to write a foreword. What follows the foreword is a reprint of the 1916 printing of Smedley's diary.
The Publisher
Page vi
Foreword
Page vii
In Platte River Road Narratives I award William Smedley three stars for his account of his adventurous 1862 journey from Illinois to Oregon. Requested by his descendent, my fellow Littleton Rotarian Bob Smedley, to write a foreword for this new edition of Smedley's 1916 volume, and thus having an opportunity to read it once more, I would be tempted now to award him four stars, for the thoroughness and quality of his narrative. I am further impressed with its credibility and literary merit, reflecting actual trail happenings, including a fair share of melodrama.
Quite recently, Bob Smedley discovered the original ancestral Smedley diary at the Colorado Historical Society. My subsequent examination of it indicated that the 1916 publication was essentially the same as the original. What is amazing about the original diary is its sizea tiny leather-bound booklet only slightly larger than two by three inches, with sixteen lines per page, written in tiny script but still legible, even without the help of a magnifying glass. Equally interesting is the realization that this young writer was not really a bona fide "emigrant," but a young adventurer! Despite the hardships and dangers of his journey, William Smedley managed to write a complete and coherent record of his 1862 transcontinental trek.
Page viii
The sesquicentennial of the original Oregon Trail of 1843 has given the public a new understanding and appreciation of the historical importance of all westward migrations up what I call the "Great Platte River Road" in my first book, or more precisely, the "Great Platte Valley Migration Corridor of 1843-1866." While both scholarly and popular authors tend to focus on the much heralded early migrations of 1843-1853 to Oregon and California, the later years up through 1866 have suffered neglect. The reality is that the migrations of the later period, 1858-1866, from the Pikes Peak gold rush to the advent of a transcontinental railroad, are of equal importance to those of the more publicized earlier period, but they have been outshone by the glamour of the early Oregon Trail and the epic California gold rush. William Smedley helps to illuminate this somewhat neglected later period.
Attention is called to the rich contribution Smedley has made to our understanding of the overland experience of the still adventurous 1860s, most importantly, his illumination of the misunderstood fact that while the classic Oregon Trail of the 1840s was confined to the south side of the Platte, from 1849 on through the 1860s a fair percentage of people migrating to both California and Oregon traveled along the north side of the Platte,
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