Sep 17, 2009 - Sale 2186

Sale 2186 - Lot 71

Price Realized: $ 390
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(CALIFORNIA.) Sasseen, John P. Letter home from the cholera-ridden Oregon Trail. Autograph Letter Signed to his brother James B. Sasseen of Princeton, KY. 4 pages, 12 x 7 1/2 inches, on one sheet, moderate separations at folds, some soiling on address panel. Little Blue River, NE, 1 June 1852
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In 1852, John Phelps Sasseen (ca. 1802-1880), a farmer from Princeton, KY, decided to try his luck in California and set out on the Oregon Trail. Traveling with him were several of his Kentucky neighbors, including a Cumberland College student named Richard Wilkins who had boarded in his home. This letter, written as the party trekked across southern Nebraska, describes a disastrous journey plagued by cholera: "We have seen a good many fresh graves within the last 100 miles . . . We met several of our Princeton friends day before yesterday in the morning returning home. I pitied them very much. They had lost 3 of their company, & got alarmed & turned back. Some of them were . . . as bad scared as any person I almost ever saw. Some of them would hardly take time to talk to us." Sasseen's party was on the verge of dividing between two leaders, one a "wicked man" who cursed and disregarded the Sabbath, and another who wanted to rest on Sundays and had no knowledge of the route. Several horses had broken loose, but were recovered "by paying an Indian 5 dollars." Sasseen's former boarder Wilkins was described as quite ill with cholera. A postscript notes that Wilkins has died, and asks that the news be broken to his mother gently. Despite the hardships, Sasseen expected "to see California or be buried on the way," and was able to appreciate the farming potential of the Nebraska prairie, assured that soon "the white man will be put into the possession of this country." He closes with a note to his wife Lucinda, who had stayed behind.
Sasseen describes his present location as about 55 miles from Fort Kearney, which places him a few miles south of modern Hastings, NE. The letter was postmarked Platte City, MO, so it was probably given to one of the retreating wagon trains to mail on their way back to civilization. Sasseen apparently did reach California (see the 1859 state register, page 280), but was back in Kentucky by 1860.