Story of the Crow Emigrant Train of 1865

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Notes

During the Autumn of 1937 Francis Marion Watkins, my great-grandfather, sat at my mother's kitchen table and related his memories of his journey across America in a covered wagon train in 1865. Noted local historian Ralph Leroy Milliken took down his story and it was subsequently published in the Livingston (California) Chronicle. Later it was reprinted in a booklet.

I have come into possession of a photostatic copy of this booklet. I had originally intended to make additional copies and distribute them to as many friends and relatives as wished to have copies. But upon examining my copy, I realized that the tiny typeface used, combined with the inevitable loss of quality recopying would entail, would make such copies very difficult to read. That realization has caused me to instead scan the booklet and use optical character recognition software to convert my copy into files suitable for computer use. What follows is the result of my work.

Although the booklet is copyrighted, I am fairly certain that the great age of the booklet, the very small original print run and its historical value justify its re-publishing in this format.

I converted the text into this format with as few changes to the original literary "feel" of the booklet as possible. I made minor changes to the text. I corrected some spelling errors and removed one doubled word. I capitalized some parts of geographical names that were incorrectly rendered in the original, such as changing "Stanislaus county" to "Stanislaus County." But otherwise I left the original wording exactly as it appears in the booklet. The booklet consists only of the cover and the text. There are no chapters or breaks of any kind. For the readers' convenience I have divided the text into seven sections. I have included a plain text version. You may find this text version to be more "printer friendly." Since the plain text file is not in the hypertext markup language (HTML) used by the web, you will need to use your browser's "Back" command to return to the HTML version of the document.

Some of you sensitive or Politically Correct people will undoubtedly be offended by some of Mr. Watkins' phrasing. Please send your complaints to him, not me.

As you will see on the cover page, the booklet's copyright is dated 1935, and the date of publication in the Livingston Chronicle is given as January, 1935. These are incorrect dates, as the interview took place in 1937.

Send to rsturge@inreach.com

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