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NOTE: Told her story in the Arksnsas Gazette June 6, 1943 when she was 86.

"Cross Country in 1878 as told by Isabelle Moore Estes"
Second Great Grand-Aunt of Anna & Chad Haller
By Esta R. Perryman

Cross country travel was hard and hazardous 60 years ago and there are not many pioneers of that date left to tell us about the adventures and hardships they encountered in making long trips into new country, but here is a story told by one of those old-timers who is now 86 years old.

She is Mrs. Isabelle Moore Estes of Day, Ark., and waco, Texas. She was born in Tennessee, near Dyersburg, in 1857, and came to Arkansas with her parents when she was two years old. She grew up near Day postoffice in what is now Izard County. She attended the first free school taught in that part of Arkansas, her father, Daniel D. Moore, being the teacher. When she was 17 years old she married David G. Estes, and when she was 21 she went with her husband in a covered wagon to Idaho. Most of the western part of the trip was made over the old Oregon Trail.

In talking about the experience of her early life, Mrs. estes said that she and her husband were finding it pretty hard going in the spring of 1878. They had a little boy two years old and a baby six months old. Her husband was cutting rails for 25 cents a hundred, and they were paying a dollar a bushel for wheat for their bread.

One night David came in from work and said, "Isabelle, I believe I like biscuits better than anything else in the world, but this is a hard way of getting them. Let's go to the wheat country of the northwest and grow our own". Mrs. Estes required little urging to agree to the adventure. Preparations were begun at once for the long trip that kept them traveling the remainder of that spring, through the summer and early fall-a trip that is now made in three or four days over the fine highways- or was before gasoline rationing.

The Estes were joined on the expedition by the Dan Moore family (cousins), consisting of the father, mother, six children, ranging in age from 12 down to six months, and a hired man. The Moores took to wagons, but the Estes had only one wagon with a change of horses.

With all their plans made, provisions assembled and packed, the two families made the start late in April on a journey that was to carry them through months of adventure, thrills, hardships, and sorrows to their destination-the little town of Moscow in western Idaho, near the Washington state line.

They traveled but a few miles the first day and spent the night scarcely outside their own neighborhood. The next night they camped near Salem, about 25 miles farther on.

"Two of my husband's friends were doing jury duty, as court was in session", said Mrs. Estes, "and they rode out and spent the night with us. They bade us good-bye and wished us luck the next morning and we moved on toward Springfield, Mo., feeling that now we really were leaving home, friends and familiar faces."

In the course of four or five days the little party arrived at Springfield, which then was a thriving, good-sized town. At this point they were joined by the Sheridan Massey family (Many of Mrs. Massey's descendants are prominent in the affairs of North Arkansas today)

At Springfield a tent and a few other conveniences were added to their eqipment, and the small train of five wagons really began it's long trek.

"We encountered our first mishap a few days after leaving Springfield," Mrs. Estes said, "We had crossed the Neosho river and made our camp too near the river. During the night a terrible rainstorm came up. Before we realized our situation there was from four to ten inches of water in our tent. We hastily broke camp and in the midst of the downpour moved to the Massey's camp on higher ground. They had a stove and we spent the next day, Sunday, drying out."

As they traveled on to Fort Scott, their road sometimes led them through beautiful wheat fields and Mrs. Estes remembers they bought corn in Kansas for 15 cents a pound. The Moores were taking two cows with them to furnish milk for their children en route, but they had to sell the cows in Colorado when their feet became too sore to travel."

The travelers stopped one day out of the week to wash and clean up in general. The men would take advantage of this stop to hunt.

"Fresh meat was always appreciated and especially when our provisions began to run low," said Mrs. Estes. "Wecould buy flour, sugar and coffee at certain points, but these staples sold at high prices. Meat we could not get as we got farther west, and there wasn't much game that our inexperienced hunters could get except jack rabbits, and they were a sorry excuse for meat. Once in a great while we would get an antelope, and they were good, but most of the time we were without meat." They saw no buffalo, but depended on a buffalo chips for fuel across the prairies.

In Colorado, the Moores lent a horse and saddle t0o a resident and sent their hired man with him for elk, but in three days they came back without an elk and Mrs. Estes said that was a great disappointment to them all.

The Massey family were all grownups, so in Colorado they descided to go on ahead, as the Moores and Estes were frequently delayed because of sickness among their children.

"But we never lacked traveling companions for long," Mrs. Estes said, "Shortly after they left us, we were joined by a party of five men who were traveling for their health. One of their number had tuerculosis, or consumption, as we then called it. They were well equipped for traveling with a stout light wagon and I marveled at their many conveniences to make their 'housekeeping' easy."

Somewhere in Wyoming the eldest Moore child developed mountain fever, but the families traveled on until he became so ill that they were forced to stop near Green River City. Here the boy died and was buried.

"I shall always remember how kind the townspeople were to us," said Mrs. Estes. "Although we were strangers, several came out and set up with us, bringing their own midnigjht refreshments. My babies became very sick, and I could not attend the funeral. It was a grief-stricken little band that moved on after our first casualty. To add to the gloom of our low spirits, the total eclipse of the sun made it all seem omnious and forboding to us. We didn't know then that mountain fever was caused by a tick bite and that more trouble lay ahead for us."

When the travelers reached Fort Hall the government troops halted them and would not allow them to proceed until a train was collected for their protection against Indians. The Bannock Indians were giving some trouble in that section of the country at the time and it was not safe to travel in small groups. In two days a train of 30 wagons had collected and they were allowed to proceed.

Among those who traveled with them out of Fort Hall was a family of civilized Indians-Chief Yellowhawk, his squaw and little son and a young man. Mrs. Estes does not know to what tribe they belonged, but they were from a reservation in Oregon and had been to Colorado to recover some stolen horses. They had about 15 horses in their possession and were taking them back to the reservation. These Indians traveled traveled on horsebook, of course, and when they came to rivers to be ferried, they removed their clothing, put on breach clothes and swam the streams with their horses. Chief Yellowhawk told Mrs. Estes that he was 70 snows old.

"We never saw any other Indians in the supposed-to-be-dangerous territory," said Mrs. Estes, "but our Indian companions reported seeing Indians every day. They rode the ridges and higher ground to the right and left of the train and saw everything, where we with our untrained eyes, would have seen very little."

After they had passed through the danger zone and it was no longer necessary to keep together for protection, the wagon train broke up. The Moores and Estes were again traveling alone when Mrs. Moore and her baby became desperatly ill.

They stopped at a stage station on the snake river, where the stages stopped to change their tired horses for fresh ones. There was no one except two men who took care of the horses. The men told them about a doctor who ran a ferry, about two miles down the river, but when he came, he had no medicine. He sent to Boise City, about 75 miles distant, for it, but before it arrived Mrs. Moore had succumbed to mountain fever the third day after their stop.

"I was the only woman within 75 miles," Mrs. Estes said:" so my husband and I prepared the body for buriel, and the two men at the station found some rough boards and made a coffin."

The baby was not expected to live and it's mother left instructions for them to knock the rockers off it's cradle and bury the baby in it. They did when it followed it's mother in death two days after her burial. But the day before the baby died some welcomed travelers came into camp-a man, his wife and twin sons, about 16 years old. Mrs. Estes said. "I can not tell you how glad I was to see anither woman at this time."

When they had buried the baby, they started on again, though by this time Mrs. Estes and her baby were very ill. After they had traveled for several days she became too ill to go farther, so they stopped on a large sheep ranch near Summerville, Ore.

The Moores, who were about out of provisions and money, pushed on and left the Estes there. The rancher and his wife were very kind to them. They moved the family into a vacant house on the ranch, so that Mrs. Estes could have better shelter, gave them hay for their horses, and offered Mr. estes a good job if they would stay with them.

"My husband did help," said Mrs. Estes, "as long as we stayed with them, but we were anxious to get on to the little Idaho community we had set out for, as my husband's father and step-mother lived there. They had made the same trip several years before when it was even more hazardous; however, my husband's step-mother was a native of western Canada and was accustomed to dealing with the Indians."

When Mrs. Estes was able, they traveled on to Walla Walla, Washington, and after a day or two of rest they started on the last lap of their long journey. Mrs. Estes had a relative in Walla Walla, a Dr. John Morris, who insisted on sending his man and a couple of horses with them to help them cover a hard climb they had to make in getting across the moiuntain into Idaho. This was one of the hardest passes of their trip and it would have been difficult to make it without this help. Winter was setting in early and there was much snow in the mountains. tjey arrived at their destination, Moscow, Idaho, on the second day of October, 1878, with two of the horses with which they left Arkansas; the other two had been swapped in Colorado.

Thus ended a long journey that had brought this litle family to a new home. They were soon settled on a ranch where they began the business of growing wheat. They prospered and ,"incidentally," said Mrs. Estes, " my husband had plenty of biscuits."

Although the Estes lived and prospered in Idaho about 10 years, they were homesick for Arkansas. Wishing to live among their old friends again, they decided to return. This time they made the journey by train.

Mrs. Estes died said she marveled at the contrast of their quick return trip and the long, hard journey they had made to the West 10 years before. They came out of Idaho on the new Pacific which was then nearing completion to the coast. The Frisco railroad was being built down Spring river in Arkansas, but it was completed only to Thayer, Mo. about two miles from Mammoth Spring, Ark. They left the train there and resorted again to wagon travel to reach their old home, about 40 miles away.

Mr. Estes died a few years after their return to Arkansas and Mrs. Estes was left with a large family to rear. She is still an active woman for her age 86, and she has recently made a trip alone to California to the bedside of a sick son and returned. She divides her time between Texas and Arrkansas, usually spending her winters in Texas and her summers in Arkansas.

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