In segments, I’ve been watching Ken Burns’s documentary The West. It begins well before the Europeans come to America and continues through the early 1900s. Today, I am watching Episodes Three and Four.

All in all, it seems like a fair documentary. I don’t really know enough about the subject to tell how historically accurate it might be, but if it’s anything like his earlier The Civil War documentary, it’s accurate enough to give you a general knowing of what happened and entertaining enough to give you a desire to know more.

While watching, two different stories struck me.

The first was about Uriah Oblinger, a Union vet who took off to Nebraska to find land and start a life for his wife and baby. In his first letter home, he wrote…

October 6th, 1872
Dear Wife & Baby:
Well I suppose the first question you would ask me now would be, How do you like Nebraska? Wife, you can see just as far as you please here, and almost every foot in sight can be plowed. The longer I stay here, the better I like it. There are mostly young families, just starting in life the same as we are, and I find them very generous, indeed. We will all be poor here together. I am hunting a home for us where we can enjoy ourselves without being bothered doing as other people say. I can get along well enough through the week, but when Sunday comes I feel a little lonesome without you. Give baby a kiss — yes, 2 of them — and take one yourself.
Uriah W. Oblinger

A year later, he moved his whole family to Nebraska. They built a sod house and farmed the land, all while raising three children, all girls.

In 1880, Uriah’s wife, Mattie, was pregnant again. On the night of the birth, a family friend wrote…

February 27th, 1880
She was confined Tuesday evening about 4 ‘clock and about 8 o’clock she took a fit very sudden and never spoke after the first one. The doctors were compelled to perform a surgical operation by relieving her of the child. The Lord called for Sister Mattie this evening at 4:15 o’clock and she is now resting with the angels in Heaven. The child is also dead and will be buried with her some time Sunday.
Giles S. Thomas

Unable to cope, Uriah moved back east and remarried. He later moved his new family back to Nebraska.

The second story is a bit more happy. It is about a cowboy named Teddy Blue Abbot. He was born in England, but raised in the West. He took to being a cowboy while his family did not. Of them he wrote, “My family and I went separate ways, and they stayed separate forever after. My father was all for farming… and all my brothers turned out farmers except one, and he ended up the worst of the lot — a sheep-man, and a Republican.”

After a long cattle drive (and after getting paid), he remembered…

I bought some new clothes and got my picture taken… I had a new white Stetson hat that I paid ten dollars for, and new pants that cost twelve dollars, and a good shirt and fancy boots. Lord, I was proud of those clothes! When my sister saw me, she said: “Take your pants out of your boots and put your coat on. You look like an outlaw.” I told her to go to hell. And I never did like her after that.

After the demand for cattle dried up, Teddy had to head home. But, like Uriah and like many wanderers, that drive to keep moving couldn’t die.

“After I got home my father said to me one night: ‘You can take old Morgan… and plow the west ridge tomorrow.’ Like hell I’d plow the west ridge. And when he woke up next morning, Teddy was gone.”

Related posts:

1. Watching which “facts” we use
2. Thoughts after watching James Benning’s RR
3. 2008 – Best Year Ever? Hell Yes! (part three – August thru December)
4. 2008 – Best Year Ever? Hell Yes! (part two – Scoot 66)
5. 2008 – Best Year Ever? Hell Yes! (part one – January thru April)