A Day In The Life With Sarah Rousseau
Excerpts from Sarah J. Rousseau’s wagon train diary.
May 16, 1864
Monday
Got up and prepared breakfast. After eating, all confusion getting ready to start. I can’t describe the appearance of all things as they really are. But the weather is indeed beautiful. All nature seems smiling. The birds singing their lively song of praise unto the Most High God. We started and went through Sandyville, then as far as the lower river, about ten miles from Pleasantville. So here we have camped for the night.
Just done eating supper and getting ready for bed. The girls talking of fishing some tonight. Elizabeth and Mattie have been riding horseback most of the day. John has been riding his mare most of the time and Albert most of his.
May 17, 1864
Tuesday
The woods are alive with the sweet music of birds. Another delightful morning. The girls caught no fish last night. Seven more wagons made their appearance after we pitched our tent. We will soon be ready to start again. The girls and boys have been laughing, fit to kill themselves at a remark that Tom made, “that he must go to John B’s after this thinking bob.” Libby snorted right out…
May 29, 1864
Sunday
Went on to Council Bluffs. It is quite a large city, but don’t appear too much advantage on account of the Bluffs. Some time you will see a very pretty building, built as it were on a ledge, and at one side and the back a high bluff, apparently not more than a couple of yards from the house. … We can see Omaha quite plain from where we are camped. It is about 4 miles distant looking through the Marine glass. It brings it pretty close by.
May 30, 1864
Monday
Pleasant morning. The girls are washing today. We want the ironing and all done up. We think of crossing the Missouri River tomorrow to commence our long journey across the plains.
Meet the Character: Sarah Rousseau
Copyright: Janelle Molony
Sarah Jane Daglish (sur.) is an American immigrant from London, England, born in 1815. She is a skilled pianist and singer who arrived at eighteen and married James Rousseau, a handsome caller to the women’s college she taught at… who had actually come to visit her so-called “twin” sister. The couple moved near the Rousseau homestead in Kentucky, and from there, to Liberty Township near Pella, Iowa.
After having borne four children and establishing a musical teaching career, Sarah’s days would have remained properly arranged and relationships appropriately distanced as would be fashionable in Victorian London. It is fitting she would want the ironing done before they crossed state lines and her meticulous notation of her daughter’s snort speaks volumes. Keeping with female formalities, however, was becoming more difficult as rheumatoid arthritis crippled her body to the point of being nearly unable to stand, much less walk.
In 1864, at the age of forty-nine, Mrs. Rousseau was wheelchair-bound and in extraordinary pain daily. Her aging husband, James, was a well-known physician from Burlington to Des Moines and would have already tried everything in his power to help her heal. As the Civil War pinned family members against family members, putting pressure on the Rousseaus, one solution they found came with a late-season wagon train to California led by grizzly ex-Union Provost Marshal, Nicholas Earp.
Leaving behind their eldest daughter who had married a lawyer and likely Confederate sympathizer, Sarah and James put everything they had into this one, final adventure. After daughter Elizabeth (14) and lady’s companion Matilda Fields (29) loaded Mrs. Rousseau and her chair into a highly impractical Laundau carriage, the family set out to gather with traveling friends in Council Bluffs, Iowa for their 2,000-mile journey.
*Note: Shown in the image below is the Abbott Ladies Seminary at New Rochelle, NY (where Sarah first attended and taught), but her meet-cute with the Rousseaus occurred near Saginaw, Michigan.
Researcher Comments
Fun fact! The first recognized Mother’s Day holiday was celebrated in 1908.
Excerpts come from Across the Plains by Sarah Jane Rousseau, 1864. Interpretative material by Janelle Molony, family researcher and author of the forthcoming novel based on the Pella Company, From Where I Sat. The original Diary covers May 13, 1864, to December 18, 1864, and includes locations from Pella, Iowa to San Bernardino, California. (NOT available for public resale or public distribution.)
For questions, or to interview the historian regarding the novel project, please Contact Me.
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Special thanks to the Pella Historical Society (https://www.pellahistorical.org/) and San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society (http://www.sbhistoricalsociety.com/) for your cooperation and support!