Margaret Hanson Sharai Life Chronicles
This is the journal of a trip from California to Michigan by Margaret Hanson Sharai. She was an aunt to Clara Belle Hanson Egan as well as married to Clara Belle Hanson’s grandfather Edwin Sharai:
My mother, Rachel Henderson, was born in Glasgow, Scotland. She came to America when she was twenty-one years of age. My grandfather George Hanson, came from England. Both families settled in Cleveland, Ohio. My father Charles, fought in the Civil War. At its close he and my mother were married and together with all of his father’s family moved to St. Joseph, Michigan.
I was born in St. Joseph, May 17, 1873 the sixth child in the family of eleven children. Three of whom died before I was born. Two of these, little boys, were mere babies. The third a little girl Rachel, was five years old. Eight lived to grow up and marry. I have one brother John living in Sandusky, Ohio, and a sister Mayme (Mrs. John Harris), in Ault, Colorado. The others have passed on.
On June 5th, 1891 I married Edwin Sharai, who at the time resided on a ten acre farm in Sodus, and worked as a fruit buyer for Wayne and Low of Chicago. This being a busy season we postponed our wedding trip until December 4th of that year. Then with two feet of snow on the ground and extremely cold weather we started for California to visit our aunt and uncle who had migrated there in 1851 after the Gold Rush of ’49. They drove ox teams, taking cows and chickens with them. The oxen gave out and driving the cows they finished the trip, settling on a ranch three miles from Hayward, a small town in the foot hills near Oakland, where they spent the remainder of their lives.
We left Chicago on an immigrant train, the cheapest way of travel. The train had uncushioned, wooden seats spaced far enough apart to convert into a bed at night, and equipped with a hinged table between them that could be raised when we wanted to eat, play games or write letters. At stops along the way people would board the train to sell sandwiches, coffee, fruit, and sweets. We were five days in route.
On arrival at Uncle’s home we saw climbing roses, geraniums and other flowers blooming in the yard and oranges in the trees. We felt we had reached some place very close to Heaven. On Christmas Day we played croquet. It was like June in Michigan.
My husband dearly loved animals and broke horses for the neighbors. A cousin, who lived a little farther up in the foot hills, owned some fine cows that were dying with a hoof disease. My husband doctored them. He made a strong, wide canvas belt to put around the cow so that with block and tackle they could hang her up off her feet. He saved a great many if they were in the early stage of the disease.
In June we started back for Michigan. My husband went to San Francisco to get the tickets for home and found that they charged ten dollars more than when we came out. He was a little peeved at this so he bought a team of horses and a light spring wagon. He covered the wagon with heavy canvas and we were off to Michigan.
What we call kerosene here they called coal oil in California. They purchased it in five-gallon square heavy tin cans. Our good auntie made hermits a cookie known for its’ good keeping quality, and nearly filled one of these tins with these cookies. This with many other good things they packed in our wagon. This can was a great blessing. All our meals were over camp fires and it served as a kettle. Many a sage hen, prairie chicken, Jack rabbit, squirrel and cotton tail found its way into the coal oil can. We never lacked for meat or fish any where West of the Mississippi. I learned to be a pretty good shot, as my husband gave me a twenty-two rifle and a red-jacket revolver. Nearly every time I could put a bullet inside a dollar mark, but I could never kill any animal.
We passed the capital of California also Sanford University and Licks Observatory. We stopped to camp at a town called Beetle Mountain and saw Indians in their war paint and feathers. We were told not to be afraid, that they were harmless. They were celebrating one of their big powwows. So we enjoyed the dance and the big fire but at times the noise was almost too much. We came to the California Desert at a place called Rag Town. We started across at three in the afternoon reaching the other side at nine the next morning, having traveled all night except for an hours rest at midnight. We saw a hot spring where they said you could boil an egg and about a mile farther we came to a cold spring.
We began to climb the Sierra Nevadas at Truckee and followed the Union Pacific all the way, as they suppliied one family all the water they wanted for themselves and horses. These mountains were pretty rough, as the road had been blasted out of rock and in places the wagon would drop from one to three feet. It made me dizzy to look down as we were above the tree tops in many places. Since the road was very narrow, the team coming up had the right of way, so those going down had to drive into passes blasted out of rocks and wait for them to pass. On July 4th we were driving through snow at the top but at night we were down to Reno where the flowers were blooming again. We came through Donners Pass where the train was stalled last year and where twenty-two of the Donners family lost their lives in an early day, while traveling by prairie schooner. They either froze or starved to death. They were only one day’s travel to safety. They were all buried in one grave with a large wooden marker inscribed with their names and a white picket fence around the grave.
We saw several ghost towns, usually consisting of a couple of stores a boarding house and a black smith shop. I’ve often wished I had copied some of the signs people had put on those buildings. Rather sad and eerie like to pass through.
In Nevada, Wyoming and Utah the country was very wild and we could travel for days without seeing a soul. We had to keep a camp fire during the night to keep mountain lions back. We made good use of the fire. Where it burned down we baked beans, Johnnie cake and potatoes in the ashes. I learned to make camp biscuits. Made baking powder biscuits and fried them in the frying pan, and were very nice with syrup or honey. We often made them at home later.
We saw the Sink of the Humbolt, where a big flowing river suddenly vanishes into the earth.
One place our trail lead us between two towering walls of rock, not hand hewn or blasted, but rising tall and straight as nature created them. This was Echo Canyon. It made me think of the old saying "So many things that you say or do, either good or bad come back to you in the same way they went out."
In Wyoming a fine looking man on a fine horse road up to us, around his waist was a belt with a couple of guns in it. I was startled for a little while but he was only a prospector, who with two other men were looking for gold or silver, and just wanted to inquire if we seen either of the other men, but we had not.
Almost twenty miles from Ogden, Utah we lost our trail and found ourselves in a ranchers yard. We had missed the trail about five miles back. This was Saturday night and he said, "Why go any farther tonight? Just turn your horses in the lot there. I get awful lonesome here, why not stay a few days?" As we never traveled on Sunday we accepted the invitation. Then he said, "can your wife cook?" He had two men with him. I got supper for them and we stayed three days at the ranch.
Our horses were getting very tired and the high altitude was getting the best of them so we traded horses there and I traded my gold watch for a third horse. After driving the wild horses a few days hitched to the farm wagon we started again for home. I handled the ropes fastened to the front leg of the horses so I could pull them down where they started to run. In a few days they could be driven without the ropes and they brought us home.
We saw Chiminey Rock that could be seen for three days travel.
These are just a few of the sights we saw along the way. Each day East of the Mississippi we saw something wonderful, something new. In Nebraska we saw the North Platt River bed perfectly dry. We camped near a sod house one Saturday night and the people came to visit us and invited us to have Sunday dinner with them. So we got to eat in a sod house. That was what most people lived in. My little girl and I were nearly eaten up with fleas, we had to bathe in soda water every night to be able to sleep.
In Nebraska we bought milk and bred at farm houses. They were very nice to us. We often found fresh homemade bread. In Iowa they would say "We don’t run a bake shop," or "You can get bread in town." I was always careful to say "May I buy some bread and milk." In Indiana they were insulted if you offered to pay for milk.
Except for the two stops, at the ranch in Utah and at the sod house, all our meals were eaten out of doors and we didn’t sleep in a house until we reached an old friends home in Sawyer, Michigan.
We were four months and two days on the road, arriving home in October, 1893.
As our home was rented we lived with my husband’s mother. I worked as second cook at the Tabor Resort. In 1894 I did the cooking at Sebago Resort and my husband built a home for his brother, which we rented and lived in until the fall of 1896 when we moved to Sawyer, where my husband bailed hay and straw that fall and winter. In the spring our house was empty and we moved back home.
For a number of years my husband was rafted logs on the St. Joseph river for Colby and Hunkley. I’d drive the team home after taking the men into the woods to bring the raft down. I would have been lost many times only for our one eared horse who always brought one safely home. My husband cautioned me, "Give old Ned the reins and don’t try to turn him even if you thing he is wrong and he will bring you out of the woods." Many times I was sure I was lost but at last I’d see a familiar sight. Sometimes it would be nearly noon before their raft was ready; then I would boil potatoes, fry steak and make coffee over a camp fire. The men enjoyed that very much.
After we moved to Shady Lawn dear old Uncle Sam Versaw took over the job of getting out the logs and rafting them. He had a little tugboat and when my husband heard the tug he would come in and say, "Better may a Johnny cake, and some ginger bread, Uncle Sam will be here for supper. He was like a brother and lied with us more than he did at home for some time.
In 1899 in the first part of April, I cooked my last meal and went to bed for the last time on the ten acres. Johnnie Sharai came about ten-thirty one night and told us that Grandma Sharai was quite sick and wanted us to come. We got up and went over to the old homestead where I cared for her until she passed away in September.
I’ve passed through the days of hoop skirts, tilts, and bustles; picture hats and high-buttoned shoes and long skirts that just skipped the ground picking up dust and dirt; Mutton leg sleeves, that were quite pretty I thought, and over skirts, tight-fitting basques, lined and boned to keep them from sliding up; skirts lined through-out, with a wide strip of crinoline at the bottom and finished with braid; tight skirts that bagged out behind like the knees of men’s pants and so tight you had to pull them up to get into a carriage or on a street-car.
Those were the good old days when our neighbor cared for you in sickness and helped with the coming of a new baby. Those were the days before embalming and funeral homes. When your neighbor sat up with your dead to lay clothes wet with a preserving solution on the face and hands to keep them until the funeral. Those were days when you invited your neighbors in for all day to help quilt your quilts, tie your comforters, sew rags for a carpet, make baby clothes or sew for a poor family. Those were the days when the men cut wood for the widows or helped a sick neighbor harvest his crops and the women put on a dinner for them. I am reminded of one dear old soul who never missed a quilting or a funeral always called to see a new baby or a sick neighbor. God bless her with a long life and a happy one.
The above is copied from Aunt Maggie’s writing from what she wrote of her life.