Phoebe Goodell Judson

Phoebe Goodell Judson was twenty when she set out on her journey to Washington Territory in 1853. Her parents had already immigrated to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Phoebe had married Holden Judson three years earlier. They were determined to take advantage of the government's offer of free land and to endure whatever hardships they might encounter, "in order to secure a home that we might call ‘ours.'" And so Phoebe and Holden said good-bye to her childhood home of Vermillion, Ohio, on the civilized shore of Lake Erie. They set off, "dreaming our future lives were destined to be passed together on the far away shore of Puget Sound." It would take them six months of hard traveling across prairies, rivers, deserts, and mountains before they could even begin to realize their dream. She...