Phoebe Goodell Judson
A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home
(1925; reprinted Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984)
Women and men make history. Their ideas, hopes, goals and contributions shape all experiences, past and present. This biographical paper attempts to explain the experiences of Phoebe Goodell Judson. It will examine both the aspiration and achievements of Phoebe Goodell Judson and her pioneer search for the ideal home. This paper will focus on the decisions and challenges that reflect Phoebe Goodell Judson's and her pioneer party's trek in their search for the perfect home. This paper will help define her interpretations providing meaning to her historical past and accomplishments. Phoebe Goodell Judson and her personal accounts reveal the experience of the past and how women and men made sacrifices and made decisions creating history.
In creating the stage for the biography of Phoebe Goodell Judson, this paper will place her account on the historical time line in America. At the time Pheobe G. Judson and husband began their trek West to Washington State to pursue the ideal home, "Congress in 1853 created the Washington Territory, with Olympia as its capital."1 According to Susan Armitage in her Foreword to Judson's autobiography, "Furthermore, some of the earlier political uncertainties in Oregon Territory has been resolved. The boundary dispute with England, which had at several times threaten war, was settled diplomatically in 1846. The land that England once had claimed became Washington Territory in 1853."2
In 1847 the American Indians were a threat to all pioneers, new and old. This historical event interfered with Phoebe Goodell Judson's pioneering as well as many others. "With the way west now open and British power withdrawn, only the Indians remained to threaten U.S. hegemony."3 "In 1847 tribal frustration exploded in open warfare and missionary Marcus Whiteman and his wife were murdered near present day Walla Walla. Indian resistance continued on and off thereafter until 1859."4 In correspondence with Susan Armitage in her Foreword on Judson, "The pioneering missionary efforts led by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and Henry and Eliza Spalding in 1837 had come to a disastrous conclusion with the killing of the Whitmans at Waiilatpu in 1847 and the outbreak of the Cayuse War."5 These historical accounts will help create the atmosphere for Pheobe Goodell Judson's and her husband's adventures journey to Washington State. "As Phoebe Judson recounts, trouble inevitably occurred: the Indian Wars began with an incident in 1855 and dragged on for three years before the Americans finally ended Indian resistance."6
Another major historical event that accrued in Pheobe Goodell Judson's lifetime was the Civil War. According to Susan Armitage, "The Civil War, following close on the Indian Wars, further discouraged rapid settlement of Washington Territory."7 As documented by Pheobe Judson, "In 1861 the eastern mail brought us the news of the dreadful Civil war, where brother faced brother, and father met son in deadly combat. Though so far removed from the seat of war, most intense was our interest in the terrible conflict raging in the home land."8 Just as it was an eventful time in America it was an eventful life for Pheobe Goodell Judson. Her autobiography proves she was a part of history and not a spectator.
Pheobe Goodell Judson was born in 1932 and grew up in a little town of Vermillion, Ohio, located midway between Cleveland and Sandusky on the shores of Lake Erie. There is no real indication that Judson was born there, but her diary states she grew up there with her Husband. Her pioneer story begins when she married her husband Holden Allen Judson. After three years of matrimony they both decided, as Judson puts it " to obtain from the government of The United States a grant of land that "Uncle Sam" had promised to give to the head of each family who settled in this new country."9 With this the Judson's set out to pursue the vast uncultivated wilderness of the Puget Sound, which at that time was a part of Oregon. They departed March 1,1853. As Pheobe Judson recollects, "The time set for departure was March lst, 1853. Many dear friends gathered to see us off. The tender "good-byes' were said with brave cheers in the voices, but many tears from the hearts."10
In Pheobe Goodell Juson's writings, she describes the overland trails. Her detailed accounts of the journey which was a diary she kept at the time was informative and clearly conveys the fears and excitement of the trip ahead. As Susan Armitage entails, "The relative weighting of topics within the reminscence tells us a good deal about the pioneer memoir as a genre."11
During the trek, Pheobe Goodell Judson has a second child which proved to be dangerous in the midst of possible peril. As Armitage notes, "In return, we must accept some common nineteenth-century reticences, such as the unheralded birth of Phoebe's second child, Charles, on the journey."12 Pheobe Judson adds to her memoir, "Monday morning our party were so considerate of my welfare, and that of the "new emigrant" that they proposed remaining in camp for a day or two."13
In Judson's account, she describes the pioneer traveling party and the experience of sickness, accidents and even death. One experience she describes, "We were immediately beseiged by great clouds of mosquitoes, which annoyed us most unmercifully."14 "Had we known of the desolation and barrennness of the route that lay before us, I fear we would have been tempted to give up in despair, for its proved by far the roughest and most trying part of our journey."15
In Phoebe Goodell Judson readings one learns a great deal about the Indians and the Indian Wars. Judson tells of some accounts. "The war of 1855-6 with the Indians east and west of the mountains had hardly come to a close, when the Northern Indians, who were in the habit of making annual raids to Puget Sound for purpose of Plunder, began murdering as well as robbing, the white people living in isolated settlements along the Sound."16
In time, Pheobe Judson learned to overcome her fear of the Indians. She even learned to speak their language and won their friendship. As Judson recalls, "I amused myself learning some of the Chinook jargon used by the Indians in talking with the "Bostons," as they called all white people."17
When the Judsons settled in Washington state, Phoebe does not indicate how they survived financially or even what they gain from the land. Phoebe Goodell Judson seems to overlook these points, possibly unimportant in her view. Susan Armitage emphasizes, "We do not know what crops they grew in Lewis County, what goods they sold in their Olympia store (or, indeed, what happened to that business), or even how they lived in Lynden, although we know from other sources that they had a large dairy farm."18 As Pheobe Judson inconsequently notes, "Mr. Judson, having placed all his capital in the business, a dry goods and grocery store, our "ideal home" still lay in the future, and we contented ourselves for present in a rented house."19
Phoebe Goodell Judson supported women's suffrage, which made her a pioneer in a different aspect. According to Armitage, "Phoebe Judson also believed in woments rights. She praised the Oregon Donation land act of 1851, which allowed married women to claim 160 acre in addition to the husband's 160 as a "just and righteous law." In 1883-87, Washington Territory extended the suffrage to its female citizens."20 And now in Phoebe Judson words, "For four years, from 1883 to 1887, the territory of Washington enjoyed impartail suffrage. I took my turn on petit and grand jury, served on election boards, walked in perfect harmony to the polls, by the side of my staunch Democratic husband, and voted the Republican ticket- not feeling any more out of my sphere than when assisting my husband to develop the resources of our country."21 To add to the developments of the times, the encyclopedia of history will confirm the issue at hand, "Launched at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention the women's suffrage movement also made slow but steady progress, Wyoming Territory gave women the franchise in 1869 and became the first state to do so upon admission to the Union in 1890.22
Armitage adds to the issue of suffrage and Judson's view, "Phoebe asserted that the recession occurred because Washington women, once enfranchised, had promptly passed local measures for prohibition, alarming the liquor interests and many drinking men."23 In Phoebe Judson's words, "'The love of money is the root of all evil.' And the saloon, with its woeful influence, was planted in our midst. I have lived long enough to realize that unless the government prohibits the manufacture of that curse of the world -- that fell destroyer of mankind, "rum" it will be utterly impossible to rear on this mundane sphere an "ideal home."24
After Pheobe Judson Husband's death on Oct, 26 1899 at the age of 73, she carried on amongst family and remaining friends in Washington state. The book indicates that she passed away in 1926 at the age of 96, because she was 95 when the book was published in 1925. On the copyright page of her book, the indication of her life span is 1832 to 1926.
Phoebe Goodell Judson was a pioneer in many different aspects, such as in suffrage, human rights and the development of America. Her contributions of a woman's version of Manifest Destiny forced ajar a new door in history, hopefully to kicked open. Women and men make history and Pheobe Goodell Judson's diary of accounts proves it to be so.
Notes:
1 Encyclopedia of American History (Pleasantville, New York, 1975), p. 1210
2 Phoebe Goodell Judson, A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 1
3 Encyclopedia of American History (Pleasantville, New York, 1975), p. 1209
4 Ibid., p. 1209
5 Phoebe Goodell Judson, A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), pp. 1-2
6 Ibid., p. 2
7 Ibid., p. 2
8 Ibid., p. 189
9 Ibid., p. 9
10 Ibid., pp. 9-10
11 Ibid., p. 3
12 Ibid., p. 3
13 Ibid., p. 39
14 Ibid., p. 53
15 Ibid., p. 53
16 Ibid., p. 173
17 Ibid., p. 79
18 Ibid., p. 3
19 Ibid., p. 181
20 Ibid., p. 3
21 Ibid., p. 277
22 Encyclopedia of American History (Pleasantville, New York, 1975), p. 1084
23 Phoebe Goodell Judson, A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 5
24 Ibid., pp. 308-309
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