Dawn Comer Jefferson (L) and Dr. Rosanne Welch (R) present on their book, The Promise

On Friday March 21st my co-author, Dawn Comer Jefferson and I had the pleasure of making a presentation on “Slavery and the Oregon Trail” based on our book The Promise to the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades of Carpenter Avenue Elementary School as the guests of the non-profit Parents For Carpenter.

Transcript:

Comer Jefferson: We want to deal with American Expansionism. Doesn’t anyone know what that means? Yeah!

Student: It means America wants to expand to new lands

Welch: Exactly. The concept of “from sea to shining sea.” Right? There’s also the concept of Manifest Destiny, which meant that we had a right to own all the land from one end to the other side.

Comer Jefferson: Thought we had a right to it.

Welch: That’s what it means, yes. Exactly. So, this is what started the idea of the Oregon Trail. Right? Somebody like Jefferson felt that we had have land and every person should own there own plot of land and grow their own food on and this is going to make them a good citizen because they cared for the place because they owned it. Right? So, as we ran out of land on the East Coast, because more people got married and had children and pretty soon it was very busy. They kept moving west. And West. And West. That’s why we’re all here in California. How did you think we ended up in California? This wasn’t originally part of the Founding Fathers land, so the Oregon Trial helped move Americans west and that’s what the Holmes family we wrote about imagined. You lived in beautiful place. Yet, he wanted more so he figured “I’ll try going over there and get even more land.” But sadly, along the way. he lost most of what he had.

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Dawn Comer Jefferson (L) and Dr. Rosanne Welch (R) present on their book, The Promise

On Friday March 21st my co-author, Dawn Comer Jefferson and I had the pleasure of making a presentation on “Slavery and the Oregon Trail” based on our book The Promise to the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades of Carpenter Avenue Elementary School as the guests of the non-profit Parents For Carpenter.

Transcript:

In doing an adaptation, we always make sure the research is most important. The story is important. Sometimes we change things when you adapt it to make it work, so one of the things in The Promise that we changed was the part of the slave being able to read and write, actually came from my great, great, grandfather who coud read and write. He was a slave on the Comer plantation in Alabama which was owned by Governor Comer. And he was able to read and write and because he grew up with the master’s son. And that allowed him, and his family after that, to be able to do a little better in life because they were able to read and write.

So, e put that in the story in our adaptation. The other thing was a Quaker family. I knew a Quaker family growing up and I realized there were a lot of Quakers that traveled on the trail and their influence made people more accepting on the trail. That was also something that we pulled from my life to put into the story.

Print Edition | Kindle Edition

Dawn Comer Jefferson (L) and Dr. Rosanne Welch (R) present on their book, The Promise

On Friday March 21st my co-author, Dawn Comer Jefferson and I had the pleasure of making a presentation on “Slavery and the Oregon Trail” based on our book The Promise to the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades of Carpenter Avenue Elementary School as the guests of the non-profit Parents For Carpenter.

Transcript:

Comer Jefferson: So you brought together lots of different types of people with lots of different believes and lots of different religions and one of the things that this family met along the way — they met Quakers. Quakers on the trip believed that everyone should be treated equally. so, one of the things our family find on the trail is that – some people got to ride in the wagons, but all of the children had to walk, for the most part.

Welch: Oh yes, walking from Missouri to Oregon. You start now. Let’s see how far we all get.

Comer Jefferson: …and then the women had to, too, sometimes. So, it was a different experience for our family because they were used to only the slaves having to do the difficult things.

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