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Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico : the diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847 / edited by Stella M. Drumm ; with a forword by Howard R. Lamar

By:

Magoffin, Susan Shelby, , 1827-1855

Contributor(s):

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Yale Western Americana paperbound ; YW-3Publication details: Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press , 1982 , c1926.Description: xxxv, 294 p., [5] leaves of plates : ill. ; 21 cmSubject(s):

DDC classification:

LAS 92 MAG

Summary: In June 1846 Susan Shelby Magoffin, eighteen years old and a bride of less than eight months, set out with her husband, a veteran Santa Fe trader, on a trek from Independence, Missouri, through New Mexico and south to Chihuahua. Her travel journal was written at a crucial time, when the Mexican War was beginning and New Mexico was occupied by Stephen Watts Kearny and the Army of the West. Her journal describes the excitement, routine, and dangers of a successful merchant's wife. On the trail for fifteen months, moving from house to house and town to town, she became adept in Spanish and the lingo of traders, and wrote down in detail the customs and appearances of places she went. She gave birth to her first child during the journey and admitted, "This thing of marrying is not what it is cracked up to be." Valuable as a social and historical record of her encounters she met Zachary Taylor and was agreeably disappointed to find him disheveled but kindly her journal is equally important as a chronicle of her growing intelligence, experience, and strength, her lost illusions and her coming to terms with herself.

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Latin American Studies	Biblioteca Pública de San Miguel de Allende, A.C.	LAS 92 MAG (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		050043

Includes bibliography: p. [267]-276 and index.

In June 1846 Susan Shelby Magoffin, eighteen years old and a bride of less than eight months, set out with her husband, a veteran Santa Fe trader, on a trek from Independence, Missouri, through New Mexico and south to Chihuahua. Her travel journal was written at a crucial time, when the Mexican War was beginning and New Mexico was occupied by Stephen Watts Kearny and the Army of the West. Her journal describes the excitement, routine, and dangers of a successful merchant's wife. On the trail for fifteen months, moving from house to house and town to town, she became adept in Spanish and the lingo of traders, and wrote down in detail the customs and appearances of places she went. She gave birth to her first child during the journey and admitted, "This thing of marrying is not what it is cracked up to be." Valuable as a social and historical record of her encounters she met Zachary Taylor and was agreeably disappointed to find him disheveled but kindly her journal is equally important as a chronicle of her growing intelligence, experience, and strength, her lost illusions and her coming to terms with herself.

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