A History of the Wife (38 page)

Her future would indeed try that hope severely.

Within two months of their marriage, Mollie and By left Nebraska

and her beloved family for a new life in Colorado, where there were said to be more opportunities for an enterprising young man. It was a punishing trip, twenty miles per day under heat, rain, and wind, with sickness and accident looming at every stage of the way. Mollie noted on June 14, “I have been a bride four months tonight, but I’m too tired to expatiate much about it. The weather is so hot and we are so dusty and dirty. In fact we are about sick, all of us. Even the cattle and ponies seem drowsy. We have decided to rest for one day. Rest? Where
is
rest for us!”

Mollie and By’s ten-week journey from Nebraska City to Denver was by no means as grueling as that of other pioneers who made the five- or six-month trek from Missouri to the Pacific Coast, but it was grueling enough. Arriving in Denver, where there were about five thousand peo- ple, Mollie and By camped with other “pilgrims” from the States. By worked again at teaming and devised “some sort of contrivance to be run by water power to grind the rocks to get the gold.” Mollie took up sewing, for which she got “fabulous prices.” Her hens kept her supplied with eggs, which she exchanged for meat, vegetables, and milk. It was an improvised life that called for ingenuity and a stout heart.

Soon they moved into a mountain cabin at Gold Hill, a small mining camp northwest of Boulder. For a time, Mollie became cook for the miners, a position she found “degrading”; she was “ashamed to be so homesick.” December 17, on her twenty-second birthday, she was grateful mainly that she was still alive. February 14, on the first anniversary of her marriage, she was alone in their mountain cabin “so sorry to have By away.” Finally, as on her wedding day, By appeared late at night. “He had walked 10 miles over that lonely road just to be with me on our first anniversary, and if anyone, or if I myself, ever thought him devoid of sentiment, that decides that he is not. He is lying on the bed resting, and I so happy I had to tell my Journal.”

Mollie and By’s vicissitudes continued for several years. One of the most traumatic events was the loss of their firstborn, “a beautiful boy” taken quickly by God “to his fold.” Once again, Mollie felt lucky that her own life had been spared. For a time during the Civil War, By was a soldier with the Colorado Volunteers, and the couple settled into army barracks. On their second wedding anniversary, Molly wrote:

Two years married! We spent the afternoon in talking over the old

times, bringing up each reminiscence of our lives since we first met. We have passed thro many vicissitudes and had some trials and hardships in our brief married life, but they have only cemented our hearts more closely together. We love and live for each other.

Theirs was a true love story, a model romance for the ages, and one that ended well. In September 1862, Mollie gave birth to a second baby boy, “a marvel... of loveliness,” who was later joined by a sister. By became an employee with the United States Mint in Denver, where he remained for forty years. Both Mollie and By lived into the twentieth century, he dying at eighty-eight and she at seventy-six. She was remembered by her family as a “tower of strength.”

MARRIED LIFE IN THE SOUTHWEST

From the letters, diaries, and memoirs of many pioneers who went west along the California Trail, we are able to reconstruct the daily experiences of husbands and wives in early Southwestern mining com- munities. While the men panned for gold, their spouses took on all sorts of work. They ran boardinghouses, provided laundry service, became cooks, knitted woolen socks for the miners, and tended other people’s children. It was possible for women to make money as they never had before.

Mary Ballou’s letters to her son from a mining camp in California contained picturesque descriptions of her culinary feats in the makeshift kitchen of a primitive boardinghouse. She wrote in October 1852: “I will try to tell you what my work is here in this muddy Place. All the kitchen that I have is four posts stuck down into the ground and covered over the top with factory cloth no floor but the ground.”
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From this kitchen she provided an amazing variety of food:

. . . somtimes I am making mince pie and Apple pie and squash pies. Somtimes frying mince turnovers and Donuts. I make Buiscuit and now and then Indian jonny cake and then again I am making minute puding filled with rasons and Indian Bake pudings and then again a nice Plum Puding and again I am Stuffing a Ham or pork that cost forty cents a pound. . . . Three times a day I set my Table which is about thirty feet in length and do all the little fixings about it such as

filling pepper boxes and vinegar cruits and mustard pots and Butter cups. Somtimes I am feeding my chickens and then again I am scareing the Hogs out of my kitchen and Driving the mules out of my Dining room.

Her list of dishes continued: “I made a Bluberry puding to day for Dinner. Somtimes I am making soups and cramberry tarts and Baking chicken that cost four Dollars a head and cooking Eggs at three Dollars a Dozen. Somtimes boiling cabbage and Turnips and frying fritters and Broiling stake... and I cook squrrels.”

In addition: “somtimes I am taking care of Babies and nursing at the rate of Fifty Dollars a week.” Or she made items to be sold—soap, mat- tresses, sheets and flags (one Whig, one Democrat). Or she was busy washing the floor, scouring candle sticks, or separating quarreling men. Having left her beloved children behind so she could accompany their father west, Mrs. Ballou found herself “tired and almost sick” in a Cali- fornian Tower of Babel “among French and Duch and Scoth and Jews and Italions and Sweeds and Chineese and Indians and all manner of tongus and nations.” Perhaps to reassure her son, she added, “but I am treated with due respect by them all.” This energetic, humorous, unschooled woman appears to have transported the indomitable spirit of the Wife of Bath eight thousand miles from Canterbury all the way to the Pacific Coast. It staggers the imagination to think what she would have done with a Cuisinart!

A more literate version of life in a mining town fifteen years later shows how middle-class women could live in a style not so very distant from their sisters in the East.
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Rachel Haskell, the wife of a toll-keeper in Aurora, Nevada, allowed herself the luxury of staying in bed on a Sun- day morning because the ministers (both of them) were sick. She breakfasted at noon, washed her boys (“a good scouring all over”), and lay on the sofa reading a book. Her husband, always referred to as Mr. H., warmed the supper on the stove, and she washed the dishes. After- ward, “Came to sitting room, sat on a stool near piano while Ella [her daughter] accompanied songs by the family in chorus. Drew table in front of stove, resumed reading of ‘Light’ while children with bright happy faces filled up the gaps. Mr. H. after playing on floor with two younger ones lay on the lounge and read.” It is an idyllic picture of

domestic happiness, that could have come straight out of the pages of

Godey’s Lady’s Book
.

Monday, Mrs. H. gave Ella music lessons and practiced the multipli- cation table with her sons. Tuesday, she baked bread, “papered John’s shelves nicely,” and prepared a boiled dinner. Wednesday, she went calling on her friends in town. “Dressed in silk shirt and red waist, hat and red shawl. Had rather a hard tramp through snow. Called on Mrs. Levy, quite a pleasant chat and looked at her numerous sisters nine I think and fine portraits of her father and mother from Strasbourg on the Rhine. Went next to Mrs. Poors met Mrs. C. there. Would have me stay and spend afternoon. Sent for Mr. H. to eat supper and we had a lively pleasant time till dark.” At Mrs. Cooper’s there were several other guests, “and the jest ran high and the laughter loud.” Returning home, Mr. and Mrs. H. found the little ones well taken care of by the older sib- lings, “John with Maney in his arms asleep.” Sociability in mining camps had a high priority, since all the inhabitants were separated from their original families. In general, white newcomers, if they were not blatantly poor or eccentric, could count on a warm welcome, regardless of eth- nicity and religion. Mrs. Levy, for example, was probably one of the Jew- ish settlers, who generally met with little prejudice in the Southwest.

Only one subject seemed to trouble Mrs. Haskell: her husband had the habit of spending many evenings in town with other men. One entry in her diary reads: “Mr. H. went up town with them, staid very late. I fell asleep on sofa waiting for him, but waked to find he had not yet come. Went to bed and fell asleep. Getting so blunted now on that subject it don’t keep me awake, suffering in mind as formerly.” Another entry starts with “Waked with rather a forlorn, angry feeling at heart” and ends with “Mr. H. seems much more affectionate.”

Despite Rachel Haskell’s concerns about her husband, they seem to have enjoyed a warm, companionate relationship bound by ties of affection to each other, to their children, and to their friends. Far from the cultural refinements of Boston or Charleston, this woman in the middle of a desert state seems to have found fulfillment in the roles of wife, mother, housekeeper, and friend.

When the pioneers pushed west, they came in contact with the His- panic communities of California, New Mexico, and Texas. Protestants were often intrigued by the Spanish Catholic traditions so different

from their own. California girls, carefully watched over by matrons with bright garments and tortoiseshell combs, were often married between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. Most marriages, especially in patrician families, were arranged, and most youth tended to abide by the con- ventions of their people. Girls amassed a hope chest according their means, grooms paid a dowry price—sometimes as much as a roll of gold coins—and priests sealed the marriage in a hallowed religious cer- emony. The fiesta accompanying a wedding was renowned for its high- spirited mix of drink, music, dance, food, and general merriment.
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But not all women were happy with the practice of early marriage. The oral narratives recorded by Hubert Howe Bancroft in the 1870s contain examples of wives denouncing the earlier “hateful” custom of forcing very young girls to take on marital responsibilities before they were ready for them. Maria Inocent Pico de Avila, a member of the wealthy influential Pico family in Los Angeles, remembered bitterly:

Many girls never even finished these few studies, because their mothers nearly always took them from school to marry them off, because there was the bad custom of marrying girls very young, when they were called for. I only stayed in school until my fourteenth year; then my mother took me to the ranch to prepare me to work, and at 15 years and 8 months of age I was married.
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With the arrival of more and more pioneers after the American con- quest of the Southwest (1846–1848), there were more and more mixed unions. Many of these were “free union” marriages between male set- tlers and working-class Hispanic or Native American women. U.S. Army soldiers might sign conjugal contracts with the laundresses attached to their camps, but when they were discharged, there was nothing to prevent them from abandoning their common-law wives.

Among the Spanish elite, courting and marriage were elaborate ritu- als pitting Anglo and Hispanic gentlemen against one another for the hand of a prized wife. The letters of James Henry Gleason to his sister in the East bear witness to his efforts, ultimately successful, to wed a wealthy Spanish-speaking beauty.
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Monterey 30 May 1847

Night 11 o’clock

My affectionate Sister . . .

I have popped the question for the hand of that lovely girl Catarina Watson her parents wish me to wait for 18 months and then ask for her again as she is too young to marry only 14 years of age. She tells me that she will have me and none other. . . .

Her father is worth about 40,000$. I am now enjoying the happiest days of my life. . . .

Monterey Nov’r 15, ’49

Dona Francesca Gleason, Plymouth My dear sister

Well Fanny I’m married. My bonny Kate is now reclining over my shoulder. . . . I was married on the 7th of Oct at 3 Oc in the morning. A large dinner party was given by my father at his house in the afternoon and a dance followed in the evening. the expenses must have been nearly $1000. . . .

San Francisco Mar 31, 1850 My dear sister

My wife tells me to say that as she cannot write in English. You must excuse her and as a token of her deep affection . . . she will send a pina scarf . . . they are valued here at 125.$ each. She will also send her Deguerotype in her bridal dress and reclining on a harp as she was at a moment on the marriage eve. . . .

San Francisco, July 1, 1850 My dear sister Fanny

. . . I left my wife well in Monterey & should nothing occur to frus- trate the workings of nature I shall be a Father in a few months, and then I am going home partly to see my old acquaintances and relations

& partly to get clear of a squalling baby. I like babys very much but not untill they arrive at a certain age. . . .

What I would give to have the musings of Catarina Watson Gleason during this same period! However enchanted she was with her suitor, did she live to regret marriage to a man who was obviously attracted as much by her fortune as by her good looks, and who was admittedly uncomfortable at the thought of a crying babe?

Marriages between Anglos and Hispanics at every level of society in the Southwest continued unabated from the moment of annexation onward. Within a generation, the practice of interethnic marriage was well on its way to producing the mixed-blood Latino-American popula- tion we know today.

The history of the men and women who braved the arduous journey to the North and Southwest has become part of the American heritage. But what of the people left beyond, the fiancées and wives who waited to be sent for? What do we know of their destinies?

A quilt, pieced together by Mary Carpenter Pickering in Ohio, speaks eloquently for the years she waited for John Bruce Bell, after he had gone to Oregon in 1850. Intricately embroidered and appliquéd with baskets and flowers, the quilt must have taken at least four years to make, according to quilt historian Marie Bywater Cross.
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After eight years in the West, John returned, and the couple was married on Sep- tember 3, 1861. By then, Mary had reached the ripe age of thirty. She and her husband started a family in Ohio, but moved as far West as Iowa in 1864.