This week in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Amy Johnson Crow asks us to post about wheels in our family history.
In the spring of 1850, my great-great granduncle Major W. Packard set out from Bloomington, Illinois, with a wagon train to the gold fields of California -- to Sutter's Mill. No, he was not going to pan for gold. His purpose was simple curiosity, as he wanted to observe and write about the people who were attracted by the possibility of becoming rich by coaxing shiny little flakes out of streams.
He made some sharp observations about the gold-attracted: "Now it is the nature of such news that the further it travels, the bigger it gets, and the more wonderful. So it is not strange that when the news of the discovery reached us in the then border states, the size of the sand-like particles really found in that far-off, insignificant mill-race, had increased to very respectable nuggets."
On setting out from St. Joseph, Missouri, Wellman (as he's known in the family) observed other wagon trains preparing, in his opinion inadequately, for what was to come. "[V]ery many started out without the necessary preparation, and suffered the penalty of their want of foresight in much suffering and unnecessary hardship and privation."
At one point along the journey, the travelers encountered one of the enormous buffalo herds that once roamed the plains, this one in full stampede and "bearing down directly upon us in fine style, causing no little apprehension for our safety." Men from the wagon train, mounted on every horse in the party's possession, rode out with screams and gunfire aimed so as to frighten, not harm, the beasts. They concentrated their attention on the patriarch buffalo leading the herd, and managed to turn the herd so that it avoided the wagons and their human population. As the herd turned, and the rear of the huge long line reached the mounted men, a designated few set after them with firearms, and brought back two tender specimens to furnish a celebratory feast.
A different sort of wheels played a big part in my mother's family, the Reeds of Logansport, Indiana. Francis Harvey Reed, my maternal great-grandfather, was a conductor for the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis line, known by the nickname "Panhandle Route." The line was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system.
My grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Reed was a switchman in the Wabash yard in Detroit, Michigan. He was hit by a yard engine in October of 1917, and died, leaving his wife with three small children. My mother was not yet a year old when she lost her father.
Perry Wilmer Reed and his wife Mary LeSourd adopted my mother after her father died. Perry was a general freight agent with the Pennsylvania System, based in Chicago. He was licensed to practice before the Interstate Commerce Commission, representing his employer. In 1920, he moved the family to Pensacola, Florida, where he became the general freight agent for the Gulf, Florida, and Alabama Railway.
My husband's grandfather, Andrew Lewis Rhodes, was a conductor for the Pullman Company. He lived in Jacksonville, Florida, and covered routes all over the state. When my husband was a little boy, he would from time to time ride with grandpa on the train.
References:
Packard, Major Wellman. Early Emigration to California, 1849-1850. (Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press; reprint of the original, 1971).
You can read more about my railroad Reeds in my post from last year, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 28: Trains
"Employee's Statement of Compensated Service," (Form AA-15), dated Nov.
19, 1938, Andrew Lewis Rhodes pension file, Social Security Number
(redacted for security reasons); National Archives Record Group 184:
Records of the Railroad Retirement Board, 1934- ; RRB--Congressional
Inquiry Section, Chicago, Illinois, United States.
