Found a very interesting site, which has lots of links to pioneering diaries and other accounts of pioneer life:

http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/biomenu.html

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), December 07, 2000

Answers

Thanks Joy, I'm interested in pioneering diaries and such but living so far out of town limits me. I will try this site.

-- Tina (clia88@newmexico.com), December 08, 2000.

Cheked out that site for a minute. It does look interesting. Hope I find time to study it some. Thanks for posting it.

-- Cindy (atilrthehony_1@yahoo.com), December 08, 2000.

We are working on recording area history & this site has helped us with our project study thanks! Sonda in Ks.

-- Sonda (sgbruce@birch.net), December 08, 2000.

Joy, thank you so much, this is what I've been looking for.

-- Phyllis (almostafarm@yahoo.com), December 08, 2000.

Gee, I'm glad you all found it helpful, I just thought it would be interesting. In reading some of the pioneering threads here, I decided to search on The Oregon Trail (as a phrase) using www.metacrawler.com. If you try that, you may get many more links. I was doing it kind of late at night and got too tired to look at any more. Metacrawler is a search engine that searches using a lot of different search engines, so you get more "hits". Dogpile (www.dogpile.com) does the same, but gives them to you in a different format, and I prefer Metacrawler. Have fun!

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), December 08, 2000.

Joy, thank you for the tip. I enjoy that type of reading and found the site interesting. Perhaps you would enjoy this link. http://waltonfeed.com/old/index.html, It has some interesting articles on how things used to be done.

-- Mark M in NC (MagicMark85@aol.com), December 10, 2000.

I know it's kind of off the subject of the original pioneers, but have you all read the book, "The Egg and I", by Betty MacDonald? I recommend it only for those who can appreciate a wry sense of humor and strong sarcastic wit - and she's not very politically correct. But I love that book.

Basically, she is on an off the grid homestead in the early 1900's in the Pacific Northwest.

I hear that the book is much better than the movie that was called the same thing.

-- Lori in SE Ohio (klnprice@yahoo.com), December 11, 2000.

Looks really interesting....didn't have time to read everything but I'll go back again. My Mother-in-law's grandfather & family came over the Oregn trail in '47 and settled here in Oregon. Three of his (grandfather's) uncles came over in '43 and built the first sawmill in Oregon. There are several books written by or about family members regarding their experiences. If anyone is interested in Oregon history, I believe the name of one of the books was To Oregon by Ox-Team in '47 (or something like that) by George W. Hunt. Another is A Record of a Notable Pioneer Family of Oregon, by Fred Lockley. Interesting reading as it tells a lot about their experiences once the family arrived in Oregon. Still another is Sublimity-The Story of an Oregon Countryside 1850-1950, by Mark Schmid.

-- Lenette (kigervixen@webtv.net), December 14, 2000.

Here's a link to a book written by my grandfather's aunt, about her mother's stories of the family's trip over the Oregon Trail. The little boy Darius in the story was Granddad's father (much later, of course!!). http://flag.blackened.net/daver/1sthand/atp/atp.html I'm hoping someday to get Granddad's book up on the net; it is mostly about his growing up on the Oregon Coast and hunting stories, but still interesting reading.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), December 14, 2000.