Alvin Coffey

Alvin Coffey was a black pioneer and a slave who made the journey west across America. His journal is of significant importance as there aren’t many accounts of black people who travelled through the states at this time. He made the journey as part of an ‘ox team’ which consisted of several wagons pulled by oxen. Although he doesn’t specifically state how many people he travelled with he said that on train ahead of him had fifteen wagons each carrying 5 people in it.

Alvin set off from St. Louis in Missouri on the 2^nd of April 1849. It does not say what caused his owner to leave but he talks about hundreds dying on a regular basis from cholera in St. Louis and in St. Joe. It was a very dangerous journey with many things to plan for, such as when to cross certain parts of the country such as desert. 

Even with precautions taken such as giving the cattle a day to rest before making the move across the desert to ‘black rock’, Alvin still writes that ‘a great number of cattle perished’ on the way.

The danger was not only because of the landscape, Coffey also writes about when he was travelling through Sacramento Valley and one of the oxen collapsed, only for wolves to eat it alive.

Camping conditions were also bad for the pioneer, who writes that even though they had tents they had to share with others and they barely kept them dry.

He writes about an entrepreneur selling his train 100 pounds of bear meat for a dollar per pound which was a large amount of money in 1850, which was the year he got to California. Alvin Coffey eventually earned his freedom and went on to live a long life.

Sources: http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/coffey.html