My Grandparent's 1926 California Trip Project

Posted on

In October 1926 my grandparents, Clarence and Miriam Abia McFate, packed their family into what I imagine was a pickup truck with a homemade camper in the bed and embarked on a trip that grandma, Miriam, described as…

With the auto route traveling west, in a house built on a Ford with all modern convenience of camp life. Our house is equipped with a gasoline stove for cooking, a small wood heater for heating, 1 small medicine cabinet, with all necessities of a young hospital. Folding table and chairs, 1 day bed, used in day time as a seat and a place for our bed covers, when not in use. One cupboard and all cooking utensils including a pressure cooker. We fasten tent and camp cots on out side. All in all we have a very comfortable way to travel. Not to fast but just fast enough for the most enjoyable time of our lives.

Following you will find each day drive as we journey on.

By grandma’s account they traveled 2,809 miles between October 18, 1926, and November 28 of that year, a span of 42 days on-the-road.

Rootstalk Plan

A few years ago I approached the publisher and editor of Rootstalk, a print and digital publication of the Grinnell College Center for Prairie Studies, to inquire about featuring grandma’s journal in an upcoming edition of the magazine. They were very supportive, but we quickly realized that all 60+ pages of text could not possibly fit in a single issue, so a plan was made to break the journal into three annual installments with the last to publish sometime in 2026 on the 100th anniversary of the trip.

Because Rootstalk has an undetermined future, we recently decided to create a substantially condensed edition of the journal for the print issue of Rootstalk targeted for release following the Spring 2025 term. Along with the condensed print edition it is our intent to also produce an edited and augmented digital edition of the entire journal in Rootstalk’s Spring 2025 issue. There is no class of assistant editors meeting this semester so the effort will involve just the editorial staff and me, along with any assistance, and/or content, I can solicit from interested family members.

The Task at Hand

In order to get the journal published I plan to re-read the entire journal, noting those portions that I believe are worthy of inclusion in the condensed version (about 5%-10% of the journal). I also hope to write an intro piece and end reflection to accompany the journal, along with gathering some photos to help tell the story.

In the digital edition I hope to also include a timeline and a map, both helping to tell the story in a different fashion. To that end I’ve obtained a royalty-free US highway roadmap from November 1926, and have created a GitHub private repository of resources at Grandparents-Miriam-and-Clarence-McFate-California-Trip.

Starting From a PDF

Grandma’s manuscript was transcribed into a typewritten document many years ago by members of my extended family. I have since obtained a scanned text document of the typewritten transcript, and converted it into a 64+ page PDF from which my work will begin.

Step-by-Step

This section, to be expanded over time, is a step-by-step list of tasks needed to transform the PDF into something suitable for publication.

  1. Identify and sequentially number the paragraphs.

  2. In each numbered paragraph collect the following using automated text analysis:

    a) References to the travelers
    b) References to people encountered on the trip
    c) References to places
    d) Corresponding date or dates