Walking Across America

Locomotive from B&O RR Museum, Baltimore

My Great Grandfather, William Winter Lewis was youngest of four brothers. His three older brothers fought in the Civil War; all three at the Battle of Gettysburg, one was killed and the other two each lost their right arms but survived. G-Grandfather William was a little young so missed the horror of that war. He graduated from State Normal School in Erie, PA and then taught school. However, the call of the west was very loud to the young men of post-war America, and G-Grandfather William was no exception.

He headed west and stopped in Rochester and Mankato, MN, to teach school. But then the wanderlust must have hit him again for in 1866 he joined a wagon train of 56 wagons enroute to Helena, MT. The wagons were filled with supplies, women and children; the men walked. G-Grandfather William told his children he walked over 1,000 on his journey. In 1874 he rode on horseback from Helen, MT, to Walla Walla, WA. From Walla Walla he took a stage coach several hundred miles to a railhead and caught a train back to his home in Erie, PA.

Quite an adventure story…coast to coast (almost) in the harshest of conditions. Yet, that was just a thing that people were doing after the war. He married my great grandmother in 1877 in Erie, PA, but they immediately left and settled in Iowa.

This story was written by hand, by my grandmother, Florence Lewis Jones. She was born in 1883 and wrote a short record of her family’s history. She had a fascinating life and many, many children.