02744cam a2200349 i 4500 544648594 TxAuBib 20211229120000.0 190302s2019||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2019008923 9781943681327 pbk. : alk. paper 1943681325 pbk. : alk. paper TxAuBib rda Taylor, John McLellan, (1947-) Samuel Bowman Watrous : transitional frontiersman / John Taylor. Los Ranchos, New Mexico : Rio Grande Books, [2019] pages cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references and index. New England origins -- The Santa Fe Trail -- Taos and the Ortiz Mountain years -- Out of the mountains and onto the plains -- La Junta : building a mercantile dynasty -- Spiritualism and the hermit -- Politics and Indians -- The Civil War And Bosque Redondo -- Josephine arrives and so does the railroad -- A terrible nine months -- Aftermath/epilogue. "Samuel Bowman Watrous was born in Vermont three years before the War of 1812. He traveled to the Mexican Province of Nuevo México in 1835 by wagon train along the Santa Fe Trail and ran a store for miners during a period of gold fever south of Santa Fe. He and his family homesteaded on the eastern plains in 1849, participated in the coming of the railroad in 1879, and died under suspicious circumstances in 1886. During his 76-year lifetime, Watrous witnessed massive upheavals in his personal life, in the life of New Mexico, and in the life of the nation. He had three wives, was widowed twice, fathered 11 children, and outlived four of them. He lived through the Taos Rebellion in which one of his mentors was killed, the Mexican-American War which changed his homeland from Mexico to the United States, the Civil War which caused him to flee from his home, and the Indian Wars in which another of his friends was killed. He also saw the opening of New Mexico to the rest of the United States as the railroad replaced the wagon train as a means of transport. His was truly the life of a transitional frontiersman of the American West"-- Provided by publisher. 20211229. Watrous, Samuel Bowman, 1809-1886. Pioneers Southwest, New Biography. Frontier and pioneer life West (U.S.) Santa Fe National Historic Trail. Rio Grande Valley (Colo.-Mexico and Tex.) History 19th century. Watrous (N.M.) History 19th century. New Mexico Biography.