This is a non-fiction book, and is basically a review and analysis of the diaries and letters of women who made the journey west, along with what was written about these women, both at the time and much later on. While this may not be easily available at your local library, if you had ancestors who traveled in a wagon train to the west coast, or even if they didn’t get quite that far, this might be worth the effort to locate through World Cat, or to purchase. This was first published in 1982, when the author was a professor of history at the University of Texas, Arlington. Many of her sources were from historical societies.
There is something I want to point out about the frontier. The “frontier” of settlement in the United States has shifted over time. Before and just after we won our independence from England, the frontier was Kentucky and Ohio. Over the course of the next generations, the frontier kept shifting to the west, until it reached the Pacific Ocean. So, just because your ancestors didn’t take a wagon train all the way out to California or Oregon, that does not mean that they weren’t pioneers of their time. My ancestors didn’t make it further west than Minnesota and Kansas, but they were there fairly early. Before that, some were early into Kentucky.
Myres discusses every aspect of the trip to the west that the women wrote about. Some passages seem mundane, but all were apparently important enough for the pioneer women to write about. While no two women had the same experience, Myres finds commonalities, but also mentions the less common experiences and reactions. She also points out that women’s reactions to the journey were in many cases similar to their menfolk’s. Some were eager, some were determined, a few turned back.
If this was your family, how would you research them? Myres utilized information from historical societies and libraries, so many of her sources would be available to anyone. If there is a historical society near where your ancestors lived, at either the beginning or end of the journey, check their holdings. While the odds are pretty slim that they would have a diary or letter from your ancestor, they may well have documents from one of their contemporaries, which would still shed light on what life was like at that time, in that place.