Augusta's Journal
Volume IV
by
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When Adda and I got back to Eldorado from Lawrence on the 8th we found it as hot and dry as the prairie we had just crossed to get home. Our well was almost dry. The water I did crank up was unfit to drink. When I turned to the spring over by the river, to my utter amazement that old reliable source of sweet water flowing down out of the sandstone cliff was not only dry but its absence was disorienting. I thought maybe I’d gone to the wrong place, so I looked elsewhere, back and forth along the yellow-brown laminated stone face, I discovered I was right the first time. There was absolutely no water trickling down anywhere out from the ledges. The Walnut River below was low, muddy and moving sluggishly. I went home empty-handed, hoping that some of our neighbors’ wells were not dry. That summer my carrots were runts, as were other root vegetable I’d put in that spring and to make matters worse, the grasshoppers had eaten the tops off all the carrots, turnips and radishes. During the two weeks or so that Adda and I were back we took stock of our situation. Adda really preferred to live and work in Lawrence. Since it looks like the corn crop we put in this spring will hardly make silage,
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About the Book
This volume brings to a close our four volumes on the chronicled life of Augusta during a very turbulent and pivotal period in the History of the United States: the opening-up of the West, the question of whether slavery would prevail nationally with political attempts to legitimize it in the new territories, starting with Kansas; a serious depression brought on by over expansion of our then growth industry, the railroads; the explosive discoveries of gold in most of the Western Territories; one of the worst wars in our history to settle once and for all whether we were to be “one nation indivisible” with slavery or not.
Augusta’s original three bound journals, which I inherited, with some 2,000 entries, beginning before she was seventeen, records not only her personal and occasionally tragic involvement in all of these events, but the influence these events had on her life at the time.
Her journal entries from 1857 to 1860 present a record of the founding (by her father and a few other abolitionists) the town of Eldorado, Kansas that is better and more authentic than any professional early history of the city we’ve seen. She described in detail these two or three-dozen mostly young pioneers that were willing to go far beyond the Frontier to establish a voting district free of proslavery domination.
About the Author
Marjorie and Ralph are both U.C.L.A graduates. In 1962 they started a medical device company that grew to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Following the example of their first investor, they funded several other start-ups and served on their “high tech” boards. Seven of them have gone public, six were purchased by bigger companies and continue to operate.
They have served as trustees of the U.C.L.A. Alumni Association. Ralph serves on the Thayer School of Engineering Board of Oversees at Dartmouth College. They endowed the Crump Institute of Molecular at U.C.L.A. and three professorships, including one at Dartmouth. They have three children, all involved in manufacturing. Marjorie currently serves on the Kansas State Historical Society’s board. She was past regent of her DAR chapter and served as Conneticut State Councilor of DAR for three years.
Ralph is a veteran of all three theaters of World War II combat. While a cadet, he was promoted to Third Engineer on one of the famous Liberty ships and was honorably discharged as Lt. Jg., U.S.N.R.