Name:  Jessica Ashleigh Covington-Lee, aka Jess, Jessi, or Ash.<br/>Sex: Female<br/>Height: 5'-8"<br/>Weight: 135 lbs.<br/>Hair color/style: Formerly wavy, honey blonde, about down to her mid back.  Now cut short, ragged, dyed chestnut brown.<br/>Originally from Georgia, wife of a confederate soldier, mistress of a moderate sized plantation located in North Georgia, near present day Rome.<br/><br/>(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/4/43/Jessica-Ashleigh2.jpg)<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: comic sans ms;">April, 1866<br/><br/>My Dearest Josiah,<br/><br/>I've decided to address my words in this journal as if I were writing them to you, my husband, for it gives me comfort to think of you near me somehow.  It has been almost three years since I lost you, and still I yearn for your touch.<br/><br/>I shall keep this diary as a record of my great adventure.  A new life awaits me in the West.  Perhaps I can find some peace there, or at least a new start.  My journey began, Josiah, a month ago.  I am sad to say that it began with the sorrow of losing Greenbriar to those damned Yankee financiers.  But in truth, it had come to that at last.  I tried, my husband, I tried so very hard.  But since you left me to join your unit, it became harder and harder to make ends meet.  When the blue bellies came at last to Georgia, we all did what we could.  I did my part too, Josiah.  I think you would have been proud of me.  I'd like to think so. <br/><br/>When I was able to return to our home, there wasn't much left.  The Yankees had looted the farm, and the negroes were gone; run off or scared off, I could not say.  Without help, I could not keep things going for long, but made the best go of it I could.  When I just couldn't carry on any longer, I took what funds I could muster and bought passage to Missouri.<br/><br/>And that, my dearest, brings me to the odd circumstance I find myself in now.  I am traveling westward with two other women as my companions on the journey, but that is not the strangest part.  One of them is a Yankee, judging by her speech, and the other, a woman of the town.  Two more unlikely companions for me to associate with could not be found, Josiah.  But the strangest part is yet to be told, for I am posing as a man, a husband to one of them, with the other claiming kinship to me as my sister in law. It is the circumstances we all find ourselves in that has forced our charade; the wagon train master would accept no females traveling alone into the company heading west. <br/><br/>And so, dear husband, it is I who now must play the part of a 'dear husband' to a woman I met only yesterday.  Our all too brief courtship consisted of hatching our scheme along with the third member of our company, a recent widow form Pennsylvania.  When we'd seized upon the plan, the rest of the day was spent in retrieving the wagon, team of oxen, and the supplies from the guarantor who held them on behalf of the young widow, and in making me look more like a man.  The golden locks of which you were always so fond had to be sacrificed to further the impression.  With the help of my two new companions, I cut my hair short and ragged, and dyed it a deep chestnut brown.  A large hat with a big floppy brim and a kerchief will help to hide my appearance from prying eyes.  Men's clothing will do the rest.  It isn't the first time such a costume has worked to conceal a woman's charms.<br/><br/>And so, as we embark on this adventure at last, each of us with our own reasons for going west, we will be forced into close living arrangements and intimate company.  I shall have to find some common ground with these women if we are to pull off our little deception.  And pull it off we must, lest the wagon master leave us behind somewhere along the trail in the wilderness.<br/><br/>Neither of the other two know, Josiah, of my past.  Scarcely two years ago saw me in similarly unlikely company, in circumstances not so very different.  I made it through that, and am determined to make it through this.<br/><br/>Until my next entry, I shall close, as always, <br/><br/>With affection,<br/>Jess<br/></span><br/><br/>+++++++++++++++++++++<br/><br/>(http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~moicgs/Web-Images/Wagon_Train1.gif)<br/><br/>The sharp crack of a whip split the Missouri Spring morning like a clap of thunder, signaling the wagon train to get underway.  The groan of wood and leather, the bawling of oxen in their traces, and the slow creak of wagon wheels protesting into motion filled the air with a raucous cacophony in the moments to follow.  Yet the entire mix seemed to blend into one long sigh of relief; anticipation of the journey ahead expressed as an eagerness to finally be getting underway.<br/><br/>The wagon train was nearly forty wagons strong that Spring morning when they set out from Jefferson City, Missouri, along with livestock numbering over two hundred animals, thirty-two families, and a dozen unaccompanied men, including a wagon master and a guide.  The train slowly lurched out onto the Missouri prairie, raising a cloud of dust in the early morning air.<br/><br/>Somewhere near the rear third of the procession, a newly purchased wagon rattled along, driven by a slender looking young man wearing a wide brimmed hat, a kerchief pulled up high around his neck to help to catch the rising dust before he swallowed too much of it, a sturdy denim jacket over a cotton shirt, denim pants and leather chaps.  Dusty leather boots and a holstered revolver rounded out his apparel, and a new Henry repeating rifle was propped against the seat next to him.<br/><br/>His hair was ragged cut, and he occasionally reached up to tug at it as if he wasn't used to it feeling that way.  The young man looked about constantly, as if on the alert for something, yet avoided looking directly at any gaze directed his way, save for that of his two companions.  He drove the team of oxen steadily along, proficient enough to keep them moving along the trail.  It wasn't so hard to follow the wagon in front of them, though there would be challenges to come that would test his mettle in handling the team.<br/><br/>Beside him on the wagon seat sat his young wife, pretty and blonde.  Yet he barely spared a glance in her direction, nor a word of conversation.  They sat a little apart, as much as the wagon seat would allow, and the Henry separated them as well.  It almost seemed as if they were a little uncomfortable in each other's presence, but that was bound to change.<br/><br/>Inside the wagon, the third member of the little group rode, alone in her grief, arranging some few items to better ship the constant jostling sway of the wagon as it bounced along the ruts of the trail left by those wagons ahead of them.  Brunette ringlets descended from beneath the bonnet she wore.  The skirts of her dress spread out in the little space she occupied that was not taken up with the many boxes and bundles of their belongings and supplies.<br/><br/>To any casual observer, they might have seemed nothing more than they claimed to be: a young man and his wife, and their recently bereaved sister in law, all traveling together to find a place to make a new start in life after the harrows of the recent Civil War.  Only when one looked a little closer could the tell-tale signs that something was not as it seemed be detected.<br/><br/>But on that April morning in 1866, the other members of the wagon train were equally all too concerned about their own dreams of the future to notice anything awry.<br/>