Women’s History Month: Mother Theodore and corduroy roads

Mother Theodore Guerin and her sister-companions traveled by stagecoach from Evansville to Vincennes, Ind. She writes about this uncomfortable trip:

“ … we entered a thick forest where we saw the most singular kind of road that could be imagined. It was formed of logs, of trees that had been felled to clear the way and then were brought together as though to form a raft [corduroy]. Where some of these logs had become rotten, there were large holes. The coach jolted so terribly as to cause large bumps on one’s head. This day, indeed, we danced without a fiddle all afternoon.”

To learn more about travel in the 1840s, click here.