US History Blog

I read the Guthrie Daily Leader newspaper from Guthrie, Oklahoma! This was their local daily newspaper with local and national affairs in it. There was talk about a crime in Kansas City, Missouri and a trail for the robber of that bank, also they talked about the Pullman Strike. The Pullman Strike was in Chicago and was a great railroad strike and went into depth about who signed what and a lot of numbers. Even though this was their local newspaper it seemed to have a more national side. You didn't learn much about the people of the town because if there were any local things it was advertisements. Guthrie daily leader Indian territory in Guthrie, OK,1890

While reading Elizabeth's letter I learned that in the 19th-century west most of the people were not very educated, a few examples to prove this are "women","breakfuss", and "fowlow". I also learned that death is not a uncommon thing. Through out the letter she wold talk about on different occasions people dying and even the oxen would die on this trip. A specific example is one women she was with saw her boat sink and her husband drown with it. Another thing is that she talked about how cattle prices ranged from 65 to 80 dollars and had to pay 45 cents to live in the "meanest house you could think of human beings living in". They also couldn't afford water so would steal it from various places. They seemed to have to be very money conscious back then. I learned that life was very hard for people back then in the west during the westward expansion. A Pioneer Woman's Letter Home

Many years after the Revolution and after the new government was founded, people from all over America moved across the country. They moved for all different reasons which was part of the westward expansion like religious purposes and better   this article states that "letters connected all of these migrants with homes they had left behind" this helped to get a connection across this up and coming country. This allowed the citizens to get news from home, the frontier, and the city which were delivered by the postal service which was holding the country together before the Civil War.   https://postalmuseum.si.edu/letterwriting/lw03.html