My mother, said to be the last survivor of those who came over the
Trail of Tears, was about ten years old when they left Georgia.
They came in rude wagons drawn by oxen, each family furnishing its
own transportation or at least my grandfather did and he loaded
his wagon with provisions for his family for the trip. This
left little room as he had a wife and six children of whom my
mother was next to the youngest. They were compelled to have
a little bedding. They left Georgia in the summer and did
not reach this state till the next summer.
These people were brought through Tennessee and Southern Missouri,
under soldiers commanded by General Winfield Scott. General
Scott left these people under command of his assistant about the
middle of the trip that he might attend the National Whig
Convention, which was at that the contesting the nominations of
Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison for President of the United
States.
Mother started with a little pig that she named “Toby”.
When they started he was no larger than a large rat and each day
at noon and at night mother would let him run around and watched
him and she kept him till he was a large hog and he disappeared
one day at the noon hour and she was never able to find him.
In those days there were no roads and few trails and very few
bridges. Progress of travelers was slow and often times they
would have to wait many days for the streams to run down before
they could cross. Each family did its own cooking on the
road. People then had no matches and they started a fire by
rubbing two flint rocks together and catching the spark on a piece
of dry spunk held directly underneath the rocks. Sometimes,
they would have to rake away the snow and clear a place to build
the fire. Travelers carried dry wood in the wagons to build
their fires. The wagons were so heavily loaded and had
traveled so many days that when they came to a hill the persons in
the wagons would have to get out and walk up the hill. They
did not ride much of the time but walked a good deal, not only to
rest themselves but to save their teams.
Often, teams would give out and could go no farther and then those
who were with that wagon would be divided up among the other
wagons and hurried along. One day mother saw a team of oxen
fall dead, hitched to their wagon. The party she was with
were in a severe snowstorm on the way which caused much suffering.
Many died from exposure on the trip and mother said that she
thought that a third of those who started died on the way,
although all of her family lived to reach the new country.
Those who came over the Trail of Tears would not stop for sickness
and would stop only long enough to dig a rude grave when any one
died and then the bereaved family was forced to move right along.
Mother said that their food lasted them till they reached the
Indian Territory but towards the last of the trip that they had
little to eat and had to plan to make it last. It was indeed
a pitiful band that finally reached the new home promised them for
they had been a year on the road, food had become scarce, their
clothes which were homemade were wearing out, many had died on the
trail, some had lost their teams and wagons and had been placed
with other families and there were small children in the band who
had lost their parents.
