Betsy Sharpe Walker, Intrepid Traveler

     When Betsy Sharpe Walker was 16 she traveled more than 4000 miles from the eastern fens of England to Parkerville, Kansas by various modes of transportation - i.e. ocean steamships, trains, ferries, horse drawn wagons.
     
    The Sharpes and their nine children settled in Parkerville. For the first 15 years, when  the children grew and married, they remained in Morris or Clay Counties. From the records that I have found it's hard to tell for sure, but it seems George, the sixth child, was the first to leave the state. Some time between 1885 and 1892 he moved to Vacaville, California. Betsy and Edward moved to Topeka shortly after Edna was born in 1888. Maud, who was the youngest, married a Californian in 1893 and moved with him to Vacaville to join George. Ada the next to youngest moved to Pueblo Colorado some time between 1895 and 1900. Roseanne Sharpe's husband, Hugh Miller Fraizer, died in 1900. By 1910 she and her family had moved to Oakland, California.

      But back to Betsy and her travels. In Edna's collection of artifacts and photographs there's clear evidence she continued to do so. We know that in 1898, and perhaps more times than that, she and Edward returned to visit England. In 1915 she and Ada boarded a train and made their way to San Francisco, a journey that would have covered more than 3000 in total. Here is a sampling of the photographs from that journey. In San Francisco they watched Betsy's nephew and Ada's cousin, Stanley Blake, graduate from the Navy training school on an island in the San Francisco Bay. They also visited the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Panama Pacific International Exposition

      They toured Berkley and eventually visited Maud at her home near Vacaville. Maud and her husband, Henry Clay Blake, had orchards.
   

Betsy Walker - Ogden Canyon, Utah, 1915

Betsy Walker, center, with her sister, Roseanne and Roseanne's daughter, Ada at the beach 1915.

The two Adas, Ada Walker and Ada Somner nee Fraizer at the ocean 1915.

Ada Walker with her cousin Stanley Blake in his naval uniform, 1915.

Betsy Walker and Ada Walker before the one building that was retained from the exposition.

George Sharpe and Betsy Walker at the ocean 1915.

Betsy Walker and Maud Blake nee Sharpe at her Vacaville home in 1915.

     Clearly the camera needed a sunny or at least a bright day to get good pictures. As everyone knows the weather in San Francisco is not always that sunny. What I noticed in these photographs that Betsy was seemingly much shorter than her siblings.