Creative Books

Often the back of the poor pilgrim bears all his effects, and his
wife follows, naked-footed, bending under the hopes of the family."
[Footnote: Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey from Va. to Ill., 25, 26.]
The southerners who came by land along the many bad roads through
Tennessee and Kentucky usually traveled with heavy, long-bodied
wagons, drawn by four or six horses. [Footnote: Hist. of Grundy
County, Ill., 149.] These family groups, crowding roads and fords,
marching towards the sunset, with the canvas-covered wagon, ancestor
of the prairie-schooner of the later times, were typical of the
overland migration. The poorer classes traveled on foot, sometimes
carrying their entire effects in a cart drawn by themselves.
[Footnote: Niles' Register, XXI., 320.] Those of more means took
horses, cattle, and sheep, and sometimes sent their household goods
by wagon or by steamboat up the Mississippi. [Footnote: Howells,
Life in Ohio, 1813-1840, 86; Jones, Ill. and the West, 31; Hist, of
Grundy County, Ill.


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