the settlers: pioneer narratives

the neutral land: road to jacksonville

Elizabeth Smith hadn’t slept well that night.  This day, like all days in the life of prairie settlers, began not with a sunrise, but with a sound. The morning song of the lark summoned her awakening to the day that she had been longing for ever since she and her husband, Walter, had decided to relocate from Warsaw, Missouri to the lush farming land of Crawford County, Kansas.  Wrapping herself in the heavy blanket under which she had struggled to sleep, she arose and stepped into the dark morning of a promising day.  As always, the coals in the fire were plentiful.  Usually there would have been firewood stacked nearby for at least a day, maybe more; but this morning was different.  By the time these early morning coals turned to cold ashen dust, the Smith’s would be headed southwest to their new home near the burgeoning town of Jacksonville, Kansas. 

This home would be the culmination of a twenty-seven year journey that had begun on the eleventh day of March 1841 when, in Orange County, Indiana she and Walter had married.  As she put on water for coffee and began shaping dough into fluffy round biscuits she was counting her blessings.  She was as happy now as she was on her wedding day and; moreover, she looked back on those years as a reflection of lives lived hard, but well.  She was proud of the fact that she and Walter had raised seven healthy, happy children who were now, as young adults, traveling with them to the new home.  Together they would build a future for them and their descendants in the fertile Neosho Valley.