History

The wartime journey was both arduous and dangerous; Ezra and his young bride, now five months pregnant, finally arrived in Olathe, Kansas in late September of 1865.  With winter soon approaching, they thought to wait in Olathe until spring before continuing to California on the California-Oregon trail.  Although it had almost six months since Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, tensions in the state of Kansas were still high.  Olathe, nearby Lawrence, and surrounding communities had suffered greatly in the last years of the war.  Dozens of Kansans had been slaughtered and their communities pillaged by Confederate guerillas under Quantrill and others in the last eighteen months of the war.

Their Virginia dialect raised a number of eyebrows and they left Olathe for Colorado just three days after they arrived. Their journey to the Colorado foothills took almost five weeks.