Letitia Carson

Letitia Carson was an African American pioneer who travelled the Oregon Trail in the 1840s with David Carson and established a farm in Oregon Territory. After David’s death, she successfully brought legal actions to recover property and wages despite the severe racial restrictions of the period, making her court cases important evidence for Black settlement, labour and legal agency in the early Pacific Northwest.

Letitia Carson also worked as Pioneer and midwife. Letitia Carson was a formerly enslaved Black pioneer, farmer and midwife who crossed the Oregon Trail and successfully pursued property claims in Oregon courts.

In Jane Kirkpatrick’s A Light in the Wilderness, Letitia Carson treasures the papers proving she is free, but legal freedom does not prevent racism as she crosses the Oregon Trail with Irish cattleman David Carson.