By Ox Team to California: Crossing the Plains in 1860

By Ox Team to California: Crossing the Plains in 1860

<b><h2>“We then determined to use the small remnant of our fortune to provide a suitable outfit for a lengthy journey toward the setting sun.”</h2></b><br /><br />Like so many others Lavinia Honeyman Porter and her husband decided to make the treacherous journey across the continent of America to find a better life.<br /><br />This is their story.<br /><br />Although very young, as they were both in their twenties, their decision had been made and there was no turning back.<br /><br />Through barren plains, treacherous mountain passes, dangerous foreign lands, they led their young oxen onwards.<br /><br />As they continued their emigration westwards they met a variety of people, from Native Americans to Mormons, assisting where they could and being assisted in turn.<br /><br />Porter and her husband travelled through varied lands of the Midwest and West, stopping at camps and trading posts where they could get some rest.<br /><br />Porter’s <em>By Ox Team to California</em> is a moving piece of social history which documents the struggles and hopes of ordinary Americans in the mid-nineteenth century.<br /><br />After arriving in California after six months Porter set down her story in this book. She would go on to enjoy a further fifty years in California before passing away in 1910.