Westward Ho!

Covered Wagons on the Santa Fe Trail

On April 7, 1852, one month after his married, my great-grandfather just twenty-five years of age packed up his new bride, my great-grandmother and began their journey westward to California. Both of my great-grandparents were born and raised in Arkansas.

Hard work was not new to my great-grandfather. He was a young boy when his father died in New Orleans  during Louisiana's first cholera epidemic in 1832 while there on a buying trip.  His boyhood days were spent hard at work on the family farm, deprived of even the basic primitive schools of the area. At age twenty he was able to work farms on shares and succeeded in accumulating some savings by age twenty-five when he made his first trip to California.

John Guess, Sr.

1827 - 1919

So armed with provisions for nine months, a wagon and two yoke of oxen and necessary equipment they left with a party of eighty wagons commended by Captain William Johnson taking a southern route from Arkansas through Texas via Fort Belknap, El Paso and Yuma and finally reaching El Monte, California seven months later. The wagon party had one skirmish with Indians en route which resulted with the Indians stealing about twenty head of cattle, but there were no injuries or other serious encounters.

John Guess made several other trips back to Arkansas with the hopes of purchasing and bringing herds of cattle to California, but the problems with the Indians precluded my great-grandfather from pursuing this venture. By 1867 he had purchased 100 acres in the area known as Savannah, near El Monte, and raised cattle, hogs, mules and horses. In later years he would add acreage and raise alfalfa and generally improve the property.

Harriett and John Guess

with their five surviving children

(My grandfather, Richard Guess, second from left)

I so admire this pioneer spirit and the ability to jump in a wagon and head out in a direction filled with so much hope. No guarantees, no road-maps, fast-food stops or cell phones, just self-determination filled with confidence and the support of friends and a great desire to succeed.