Elizabeth's US History Blog

Diary of William H. Ashley Diary of William H. Ashley         The diary of William H. Ashley was written from March 25- June 27, 1825. In this diary William tells how far he and his group of four men traveled that day. He also tells what he saw, where he stayed that day, and the weather he experienced. This wasn't as much of a diary as it was a log of their travels every single day until June 27th. Something I found interesting was he never states where his destination is or why he's traveled so long to be in this certain place. All he really says is going over to mountains or camping at the bank for the creek. However in this writing the reader is able to imagine where he is going based on his descriptions. some examples of these are, "we traveled over a beautiful fertile valley" and "The mountain is steep and difficult to ascend covered with quaking asp, Cedar, pine". From this piece of writing I learned that most...

Letters of Westward Expansion article containing the letters of westward expansion   In the article "Letters of Westward Expansion", the reader discovers examples of what types of letters were written and what they would say before the civil war. In these examples, it is found that most letters were sent from the road back home to family members and told tales of what was happening on the road. One of the examples of someone writing home to a family member was written by Anna Briggs. She was writing back home to her family in Maryland when she said, " as I am journeying on through time in my distant habitation I may keep up a kind of acquaintance and not feel like a stranger in my own dear native land, if ever I should visit it again.” Another example of writing back home was by Narcissa  Whitman. She was writing to her mother in New York and on December 5, 1836, she wrote, "My dear Mother,  I have been thinking of my beloved parents tonight; of the par...

The Arizona Sentinel The negro wedding Yuma Mesa Land bill becoming a law The sentence of John D. Lee            "The Arizona Sentinel" is a local newspaper out of Yuma, Arizona. This paper comes out once a week and focuses on whats going on in the city of Yuma, rather than a national paper. When it comes to the issues the paper discusses, everything the paper does is really to inform its reader about what is going on in the town of Yuma, making it    very useful for learning about the community in Yuma  For example, instead of focusing on a presidency election or something similar on a national scale, this paper would rather discuss a negro wedding, what they were wearing, and how they spoke. That grabbed my attention because I think its interesting to see how much we have changed as a society. Back then the papers would rather cover a wedding between people who are different than them than cover national news or whats ...