The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 83, July 1979 - April, 1980 Page: 152
464 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
man's desire for one more adventure prior to assuming the responsibil-
ities of marriage. Whatever the case, in 1845 Gauldin was still a single
man, having moved from Campbell County, Virginia, to Marshall, Mis-
souri, in 1840 and having not yet acquired property there.3 Shortly after
his return from Texas, however, he married Nancy Kiser at Marshall
on July 9, 1846, purchased some land, and settled down. Gauldin and
his wife remained married for fifty-two years and had ten children.4
Gauldin traveled to Texas in 1845 with two companions, John A.
Trigg and William Booker, neighbors in Saline County, Missouri.
Booker, the son of a prosperous farmer, was fifteen when he made the
trip. After his return he seems to have continued his education: the 1850
census records his status as a student in that year. Trigg was thirty-five,
married, and the father of three children at the time he journeyed to
Texas. The census listed his occupation as farmer, with property valued
at $4,000 in 1850. All three men had been born in Virginia, a possible
basis for their friendship.5
On his journey to Texas, Gauldin followed a route through South-
west Missouri, cutting across the northwest corner of Arkansas, the south-
east corner of Oklahoma, across the Red River to Paris, Bonham, Dallas,
and then south to Austin. The Marshall to Dallas segment of the trip
required twenty-nine days, for it crossed the roughest terrain of the trip
and the weather was cold and wet. The section from Dallas to Austin
was less difficult. Although he did not date his entries after leaving Dal-
las, Gauldin probably made the distance in about ten days.
Gauldin and his two companions used roads that were primitive by
modern standards, but they were an improvement over conditions re-
ported by botanist Thomas Nutall in 1819. Nutall had traveled through
present-day southeast Oklahoma and southwest Arkansas recording the
topography, geology, and flora of the region. He described an uncharted
wilderness-"a pathless thicket, equal in difficulty to any in the Alle-
ghany Mountains."G
To cross this same region, Gauldin and his two companions followed
the newest road from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Fort Towson, Oklahoma.
3Saline County Historical Society, History of Saline County (St. Louis, 1881), 726.
}Mrs. Charles Gauldin to J. McE. Mar. 19, 1978.
,United States Seventh Census (1850), Schedule I: White and Fiee Colored Population,
Saline, Schuyler, Scotland and Scott Counties, Mo. (microfilm; Dallas Public Library,
Dallas, Texas).
6Thomas Nutall, A Journal of Ttavels into the Arkansa Territory, during the year
I819 ... (Philadelphia, 1821), 150.152
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 83, July 1979 - April, 1980, periodical, 1979/1980; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101207/m1/184/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.