By Ox Team to California: Crossing the Plains in 1860

“We then determined to use the small remnant of our fortune to provide a suitable outfit for a lengthy journey toward the setting sun.”

Like so many others Lavinia Honeyman Porter and her husband decided to make the treacherous journey across the continent of America to find a better life.

This is their story.

Although very young, as they were both in their twenties, their decision had been made and there was no turning back.

Through barren plains, treacherous mountain passes, dangerous foreign lands, they led their young oxen onwards. As they continued their emigration westwards they met a variety of people, from Native Americans to Mormons, assisting where they could and being assisted in turn. Porter and her husband travelled through varied lands of the Midwest and West, stopping at camps and trading posts where they could get some rest.

Porter’s By Ox Team to California is a moving piece of social history which documents the struggles and hopes of ordinary Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. After arriving in California after six months Porter set down her story in this book. She would go on to enjoy a further fifty years in California before passing away in 1910.