Westward Expansion

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The Oregon Trail

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1852 was a standout year for American emigration. Thousands if not tens of thousands took advantage of a treaty engineered by Thomas Fitzpatrick Broken Hand which all but eliminated the danger of Indian attacks, allowing pioneers to safely cross the Indian territories and head west. Eyewitness accounts of that year testified to wagon trains that stretched out to the horizon “as far as the eye could see.” My daughter-in-law’s 5th great granduncle (Thomas Banks) and 5th great grandaunt (Suzannah Jarvis Banks) happened to be in one of those wagons.

Thomas, having been drafted into the war of 1812, survived by paying another young man to serve in his stead. The young man unfortunately became a casualty of that war while Thomas, newly married with children, moved to his father’s home in Kentucky and then further west to Arkansas where he started a lumber business.

And then came 1852 and the promise of opportunity. Now 68 years old, Thomas Banks sold his mill in Arkansas and after gathering his wife and sons (along with other family members), he joined a train of 102 Conestoga wagons which were making their way west towards the promised land of Oregon. And while Indian attacks indeed did not occur, that did not mean the journey wasn’t fraught with peril. Neither Thomas nor Suzannah would survive the trip.

The real enemy turned out to be disease. It was most likely cholera that caused the deaths of so many emigrants along the Oregon Trail. Suzannah died first, in September of 1852. She was buried along the banks of the Burnt River. Thomas followed his wife a month later and was buried beside the Umatilla River. Years later attempts were made to find their gravesites but the temporary markers that were originally used had long since disappeared.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website. And don’t forget to check out our TEDx talk! https://youtu.be/uYlTTHp_CO8

The Donelson Expedition

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John Blakemore, my 5th great grandfather, was an instrumental player in the settlement of Tennessee. In December of 1779, when a large expedition was being prepared to establish a settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, he was chosen to lead a flotilla down the Clinch River with plans to meet up with the rest of the river party (led by John Donelson) where the Clinch fed into the Tennessee River. Together they would make the remaining 900 mile trip to the Cumberland River, past the Muscle Shores and to their final destination: the bluffs of the French Salt Springs (later renamed as Nashville).

Their flotilla of scows, flatboats, and dugout canoes consisted of approximately 200 souls, mostly women and children. There were approximately 50 men with them but the more experienced frontiersmen had preceded them, traveling by land through the Cumberland Gap. It was thought that the overland journey would be the more perilous. The opposite proved to be true.

The flotilla was beset by life threatening dangers nearly from the start. It was one of the cruelest winters in history; one of the boats had to be quarantined during the journey due to an outbreak of smallpox. The boat carrying the diseased passengers had to trail behind at some distance which left them vulnerable to Indian attack to which they eventually succumbed.

All in all, four months later, when the settlers finally arrived at French Lick, reuniting with the men who traveled overland, 33 of their party had been killed or captured. Ramsey, in his Annals of Tennessee says, “The distance traveled on this inland voyage [and] the extreme danger in every respect marks the expedition as one of the greatest achievements in the settlement of our western country.”

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.