True Grit

Eighteen-year-old Susan Magoffin traveled West with her lady’s maid on the Santa Fe Trail.

- CANDY MOULTON

Susan Shelby Magoffin was an unlikely traveler when she set off on the Santa Fe Trail in June of 1846 with her husband, Samuel Magoffin, an experienced trader familiar with the conditions on the trail. Susan grew up in Kentucky, where her grandfather Isaac Shelby had been the first governor. Used to a household filled with servants, Susan was also formally educated.

She was only 18 when she married 45-year-old Samuel Magoffin in November 1845. Just over six months into their marriage, they loaded trade wagons and set off from Independence, Missouri, following the Santa Fe Trail—a route her husband had frequently taken in his trading operations. Their outfit, according to her diary—published as Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847—included 14 big wagons, each one pulled by six yoke of oxen, a baggage wagon, a light Dearborn wagon that carried her maid, Jane, and was pulled by mules, and another wagon in which Susan herself rode. The fact that she traveled with a lady’s maid shows her status not only as a Santa Fe trader’s wife, but also as a woman from a wealthy Kentucky family.

In camp at night, Susan had a tent for sleeping, but it was a luxury accommodation with a bed and mattress, chairs and a table attached to the large center pole. The floor was a piece of carpet made from sail duck.

As the journey began, Susan wrote in her journal whenever the carriage stopped for a break, remarking on the treeless prairie that stretched ahead of their wagon caravan. The quiet stillness of the first Sunday morning on the trail contrasted with the earlier days when teamsters cursed oxen not yet accustomed to pulling wagons.

Susan wrote of prairie flowers, wild roses and a party of U.S. Army Dragoons who overtook their caravan en route to Santa Fe as tensions escalated between the United States and Mexico.

Across the Wide Missouri