In the mid to late 1800’s tens of thousands braved the harsh landscape of the Oregon Trail to settle the West. Common to most all of them is that they were families whose collective efforts shaped towns, commerce and the history of the West. The collected stories in After the Wagon Wheels evolved from genealogical research into some of those families. While fascinating to build our family trees, what often comes out is a picture of the life they led; the hardships, the joys, the adventures, vignettes of the people themselves.
Mark Goddard has spent forty years examining, first his own family tree and history, and then those connections between family and other early settlers, to paint pictures of what life was like in those times. His stories are a blend of genealogy, history, and real life.
No doubt like many people, Mark wondered at times about his family and where they had all come from. Long ago he found himself in the small eastern Oregon town of Canyon City, perusing their modest historical museum. Besides his interest in family history was an unfolding fascination with Oregon history, and he soon to learn they were inexplicably intertwined. On that day, he looked up at the portraits of a man and a woman, taken in the late 1800’s, and, looking down at the placard beneath them, saw the name Fisk, the same maiden name of his paternal grandmother. He was staring back five generations to my grandparents, who traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852. Since that time, he has continued studying the history of Oregon through the lineages of 14000+ people, unraveling stories in history, and stories of his family back to the 1500’s. His website brings those stories out of dusty boxes where they can be shared, and where he might help others discover the stories within their own families.
