Synopsis "Schooner Tales"
SCHOONER TALES is actually two stories. In 1870, the author of the first story, THE PRAIRIE SCHOONER, William Francis Hooker, was a boy of 16, developing tuberculosis, who took Horace Greeley's advice and went west. He became one of those hardy pioneers called bullwhackers, and in 1918 published his account of his adventurous life. It's a story that every American needs to read, because it explains another facet of how the west was won, and who did the winning! The second story, THE CRUISE OF A SCHOONER by Albert W. Harris, was published originally in 1911, and detailed a more modern-day trip in a Prairie Schooner half-way across America. Harris, along with some friends and a dog, started his journey from California. Along the way, he was joined by other friends as some departed, but four months and four days later, he reached his farm in Wisconsin. He used horses rather than oxen to pull his schooner, but they made the entire 2,492 mile trip. These two stories tell what can be accomplished by determined American pioneers, and will give you a new outlook on how rough it was to settle the American west. SCHOONER TALES isn't a novel...it's pure fact...and gives the reader insight into just what kind of men it took to establish this great Nation.
