Family Ties To The Oregon Trail—

History Is Only A Diary Away For Sandy Hook Family

By Kendra Bobowick

John J. Tomlinson crossed miles of bluffs broken by the abrupt dash of a prairie dog and cast his shadow along the walls of a narrowing valley. A river’s rapid current wet his toes.

“Beautiful land,” he wrote in a daily log. Captured by the whorls of his longhand cursive script, Mr Tomlinson documented the journey that he began in Iowa on April 24, 1864, moving west along the Oregon Trail.

With crisp, reproduced copies of his diary pages in her hand, resident Rhonda Cullens sat at her kitchen table in Sandy Hook with her son Chad, 14. “We have a real connection here,” she said. John J. Tomlinson is a long-ago member of her husband Chane’s family. He is Chad’s great-great-great-grandfather, and he had walked one of American history’s well-traveled paths. “One of my husband’s relatives cleaned out an old barn in the 1960s in Washington State and had found things in an old trunk. They found diaries,” She said. The documents detailing the Tomlinsons’ trek across the raw western land were preserved.

He encountered Native American Sioux, Nez Perce, and Crow and remembers a squaw wrapped in her beaded cape. On a warm day he saw a herd of buffalo. Measuring his trip by distances and landmarks, Mr Tomlinson wrote that he traveled one Saturday for five-and-a-half miles and stopped for firewood. Another day shone on a large flag swamp; he saw three graves. Often without access to a creek, he dug for water, frequently repaired a wagon wheel, worried about sickness, food, and a safe place to sleep. “At noon it rains,” he wrote. “It rained hard. Made 14 miles, camped near the river. Mrs. Tomlinson very sick. Dr Hull sent her medicine…”

Between 1841 and 1869, the Oregon Trail was used by settlers migrating to the Pacific Northwest of what is now the United States. The more than 2,000-mile journey generally began in St Louis and passed through territories later becoming the states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.

After she learned about the family link to a rugged piece of America’s history from her mother-in-law, Ms Cullens twice has told the story in local schools. Her older son Cody, Chad, and her husband are direct links to history’s gold-rushers and pioneers pushing wagon trains across the precarious terrain of the United States. In past weeks, Chad and Ms Cullens gave a presentation to teacher Paul Esposito’s Newtown Middle School class where Chad is a student. With photos and diaries of the Tomlinsons assembled, the Cullenses revealed a family history that matches the textbooks.

Go West Young Man

What were Mr Tomlinson’s reasons for packing a wagon and heading west? “Most people on the wagon train were out for gold,” Ms Cullens said, but Mr Tomlinson was not thinking about a flash in the pan. “He had been a successful mill owner — flour, wheat, grist mills, and he was going out to provide services.” He was also a surveyor. His efforts, although they passed quietly through history, literally helped shape the lay of the land. “John J., like his father and forefathers, was a surveyor,” Ms Cullens wrote in an e-mail.

Like so many people stomping a path across the country, “He caught the westward fever,” she said. “He moved from Maryland to Canton, Iowa. He surveyed and designed the layout of the town and started a timber and flour mill there as well.” As gold drew travelers west, he decided to follow and build mills for flour, and timber mills for boats. “Taking a circular saw mill and all the heavy parts needed proved to be quite a task for him…the heavy wagon broke down a lot.”

Canton is where Mr Tomlinson met Margaret and one year before setting out on the Oregon Trail, they married. “She was a young bride and he was an adventurer. She went with him,” Ms Cullens said. Margaret Elida Tomlinson, soon to be a young mother, also kept a diary that details the uncertainties she faced.

Refering to one segment of their journey four months after leaving Iowa, she wrote, “We arrived at our destination from our long trip across the plains on August 27, 1864…I being the first white woman in the upper Yellowstone [present day Wyoming/Montana border area]. When the rest of the [wagon] train arrived, they all soon started quite a colony of 14 families and one store and one doctor. Shortly after, there was a band of Indians [that] visited our little burg.”

Although the sun rose on land beautiful and new, it also illuminated unnerving discoveries. Ms Tomlinson next wrote, “They had a little white girl with them that they had taken prisoner. The little girl was about eight years old and would talk good English. She said they had killed her parents and brother and sister. The Indians kept close watch of her. She would say but very little when the Indians were present.”

Her tone was matter-of-fact, and sad. “Her name was Mary.” But what could the Tomlinsons do? “Our force was deficient in number to take the girl as it would cause a war at once…”

As winter approached the natives’ frequent visits were peaceful. Mr Tomlinson got to work on establishing a home. “He had built his mill and made lumber for the miners and traveled and also kept a ferry boat. We had a cozy log house of four rooms,” she put into her diary.

Not quite two years later, Ms Tomlinson talks about being afraid.

“Mr Tomlinson and his men were in the habit of going to the woods for timber…and I and my baby would stay alone until evening. Finally, one day, I came in the house and thought there would not be Indians that day and would get supper ready for Mr Tomlinson and his men. Behold, what should I see, but about 40 Indians and their ponies. They came to the window and door and wanted to come in. I thought they had come to kill me.” She let them inside thinking, “If that was their intention they would do it anyway.”

The Chief handed her a note that had been written for him saying they were cold and wanted fire. “I let them make a rousing fire in the fireplace and cook stove,” Ms Tomlinson said. They wanted something to eat, which I gave them…” The visitors also wanted tobacco, but Ms Tomlinson had none. At that moment a rare passerby noticed the guests at the Tomlinson home and asked them to leave. “I could tell of a number of scares, but it would take up too much space,” she writes. With one example, Ms Tomlinson recalls, “Another time I saw them coming opposite the river from us, draped my child in a shawl and ran into the woods where the men folk were working. I was entirely exhausted, but nothing serious happened.”

In fact, Native Americans were not travelers’ biggest threat. According to information at an Idaho State University website, “Quite the contrary, most native American tribes were helpful to the imigrants. The real enemies of the pioneers were cholera, poor sanitation, and — surprisingly — accidental gunshots.” But why the misconception? “Enough of the stories were true,” Ms Cullens explained.

Chad was captivated by one of those stories in particular. “The bloody scalp,” he said.

Ms Cullens explained, “[Native Americans] had chased [pioneers] off and one man went back for a lost cow. His scalp was left as a message.” In Ms Tomlinson’s journal she wrote, “[Scalp] was found of a man, beautiful black hair. The blood wasn’t dry yet. It was in the top of a cedar tree.” As Ms Cullens explained, one lone man from a previous party had turned back along the trail to find his cow, but he was turned into a warning instead. A diary entry by fellow traveler T.J. Brundage also stated that the next train, which is the one the Tomlinsons were on, brought the scalp of Mr Mills from LaSalle County, Ill., with them to Virginia City, Mont., and they also found his cow that he was out looking for when he was killed.

Most harmful to pioneers were disease and accident, at least based on the particular focus of Ms Cullens’s reasearch. For example, she noted, “According to the diary of T.J. Brundage who was on the Townsend Train: The magnitude of our train was 369 men, 36 women, and 56 children; 150 wagons, 636 oxen, 79 horses, and 10 mules; valuation $130,000; there were also 194 cows.” Also among his inventory was a weapons assessment. “The train could shoot 1,641 times without reloading.”

Water often was not clean to drink, but coffee, because it was boiled and dark, overcame much of the microorganisms and possible discoloration, Ms Cullens explained.

Ms Tomlinson’s tone throughout her journal leads Ms Cullens to a likely conclusion. “They write as if they know people will read,” she said.

And nearly 150 years later a middle school class in Newtown was looking directly at the past. The Tomlinsons would later travel the Bozemen Trail heading to Montana in 1867, taking them across more uncharted terrain to Bozemen, where they lived for a time. Eventually John and Margaret Tomlinson raised their family in Salesville, Mont., where John died in 1888. Although the brief history lessons appears to end in 1888, another link to the present remains.

Just an average houseplant, the Cullens’ angel wing begonia sits in a corner of the dining room where it adds a splash of green to the pale painted walls and darker furniture. Ms Tomlinson had brought it with her along the Oregon Trail from Iowa, Ms Cullens said. Since then, cuttings have made their way into modern Cullens homes. “My cutting is connected to 1864, definitely,” she said. It is a Cullens tradition to pass the plant along.

(Read more at the family website, ccullens.com/ancestry/journal_of_john_j_Tomlinson.)