Several years ago I had the good fortune to find, in the lumber and
rubbish of a storeroom, this little journal. A small leather-backed
notebook, it had lain unnoticed and forgotten for more than half a
century in the author's old homestead.
The original manuscript is written in a 4 by 6-inch notebook, bound in
boards. It contains 180 pages of text, with pressed western flowers and
plants pasted on the five fly-leaves at the end.
Mr. William Smith, our author's father, came from Gloucestershire,
England, in 1831 and settled on a farm (now owned by his grandson,
George Smith) just west of the village of Victor, N. Y. For several
years Mr. Smith's sons, James and Charles W., both helped him on the
farm, but eventually the latter decided to become a printer and so
obtained a position in the neighboring village of Canandaigua.
At the time of the discovery of gold in California, Mr. C. W. Smith[1]
had been for several years on the staff of the _Ontario Messenger_,
which perhaps accounts for the interesting and newsy style in which his
journal is written. Certain it is that he showed more than usual ability
and training in narrating the experiences of the overland journey and
especially in painting a vivid picture of the prairies, the rivers and
mountains, the rocks and the flowers.
And so the Spring of 1850 found Mr. Smith leaving his place in the
composing room at Canandaigua and, after a brief farewell visit with his
family in Victor, he proceeded to Centreville, Indiana, from which town
he dated the first entry of his narrative. The journal itself tells the
rest of the story, and I am sure that the student of western history
will find it one of the most valuable of the contemporary journals of
the Forty-Niners and the Overland Trail.
R. W. G. Vail.
The Minnesota Historical Society, March 20, 1920.