The Santa Fe Trail figures in lot of the history of the American West. If you were willing to load a wagon with trade goods and brave starvation, thirst, prairie fires, bison stampedes, and Native Americans, you could turn a considerable profit in Mexican silver. There’s a Santa Fe Trail Association that devotes them same attention to trail history that Mayflower descendants, DAR members, and the Daughters of the Confederacy devote to their ancestries. Historians had believed the first woman (well, the first Anglo woman) to make the trip was Susan Magoffin, who did it as an 18-year-old bride in 1846. However, historian Marian Meyer came across a reference to a much earlier “first lady of the Santa Fe Trail”, Mary Donoho, who arrived in Santa Fe with her husband William in 1833. The Donohos ran a hotel in town; they were contemporaries of the famous/infamous Doña Tules, and William Donoho was instrumental in rescuing Sarah Horn and Rachael Plummer from Comanches (Rachael, nee Parker, was Cynthia Parker’s sister and was captured in the same raid. Cynthia Parker was Quanah Parker)’s mother.

The Donohos moved to Texas in 1839 and opened a hotel there, in Clarksville. The Donohos must have made quite a bit of money in Santa Fe, since they acquired fairly large land holdings around Clarksville, plus building lots in the town. And four slaves. Mr. Donoho died relatively young, in 1845, and left Mary with five children (a sixth had died in infancy; in fact all the Donoho daughters died young, before their mother’s death in 1880). Meyer traced Donoho descendants; my copy of the book is signed by a great-great grandson.

Interesting for what can be done by an enthusiastic researcher. Several pictures of Donoho descendants, contemporary Santa Fe, and the hotel in Clarksville, index, and bibliography. ( )

A very interesting non-fiction account of how Mary Donoho replaced 6 other women thought to have traveled the Santa Fe Trail before her. I really enjoyed the specifics of how the historian and the archivist went about their research. 143 pages ( )