Esther Hobart Morris - Background

Background

Esther Hobart McQuigg was born in Tioga County, New York on August 6, 1814. Orphaned at an early age, she apprenticed to a seamstress and ran a successful millinery business out of her grandparents' home, "making hats, and buying and selling goods for women." Moreover, Morris agitated as a young woman against slavery, reportedly during one incident countering efforts of slavery advocates who threatened to destroy a church that supported abolition. Eight years into her millinery business, Morris married Artemus Slack in 1841. Three years later, just short of her 30th birthday, her husband died. Morris subsequently moved to Illinois, where her late husband, a civil engineer, had acquired property. She encountered legal roadblocks, however, in settling her husband's affairs because women were not allowed to own or inherit property. Thereafter she moved to Peru, Illinois, where in 1842 she married a local merchant, John Morris. In the spring of 1868 her husband, along with Esther's son from her previous marriage, Edward Archibald "Archy" Slack, moved to a gold rush community at South Pass City, Wyoming Territory to open a saloon.

In 1869, Morris and her two eighteen-year-old twin sons, Robert and Edward, ventured west to rejoin the rest of their family. They first traveled by train to a waystation on the newly-completed transcontinental railroad at Point of Rocks 25 miles east of present-day Rock Springs, Wyoming. From there, Morris and her boys continued north by stagecoach. They crossed the Red Desert and the Killpecker Sand Dunes before ascending a gradual mountain pass to the Sweetwater Mining District.

The dry, rocky landscape that confronted fifty-five-year-old Morris as she stepped off the stage at South Pass City appeared startlingly different from the fertile landscape she had known in Illinois and New York. Instead, her new home at 7,500 feet (2,300 m) in elevation meant scratching out a living in a barren gulch at the mouth of canyon near the Continental Divide. The Morrises settled into a 24 foot by 26 foot (7 × 9 m) log cabin with a sod roof that Esther's oldest son had purchased. Only the summer flow of nearby Willow Creek and occasional bushes along with a few lone trees tempered South Pass City's sharp-edged terrain. Winters were brutal. South Pass area residents, whose population swelled to as many as 4,000 residents, according to one estimate, either left the camp for the winter or faced extreme isolation during the long winters. Those who stayed on the mountain pass, like the Morrises, battled sub-zero temperatures, high winds, and deep snow which might not retreat until June.

Both John Morris and Archy purchased interest in mining properties soon after their arrival, including the Mountain Jack, Grand Turk, Golden State, and Nellie Morgan lodes, according to historian Michael A. Massie. Initially prospects looked good in the midst of the gold rush, where the mines and adjoining businesses of South Pass City spurred employment for 2,000 workers during 1868 and 1869, according to a Stanford University study. But then came the bust. By 1870 most miners had left, leaving as few as 460 residents. By 1875 less than 100 remained.