By Ox Team to California - A Narrative of Crossing the Plains in 1860

LibriVox recording of By Ox Team to California - A Narrative of Crossing the Plains in 1860, by Lavinia Honeyman Porter. Read by Sue Anderson. Imagine a young, twenty-something woman in 1860, reared “in the indolent life of the ordinary Southern girl” (which means she has never learned to cook); married to a professional man who knows “nothing of manual labor;”who is mother to a young son; and who has just found out she is pregnant with their second child. Imagine that this couple has become “embarrassed financially” by “imprudent speculations,” and that they are discussing what to do. They de