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The family at Gilje : a domestic story of the forties
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Rare Books
Image not available
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Manuscripts
Letter sent from Jonas and Hannah Bardsley in Cincinnati, Ohio, to relatives in England shortly after the Bardsleys had arrived in the United States in 1844. Jonas writes to his parents that after landing in Philadelphia and failing to find work in New England or Cleveland, the family traveled to the "western country" and settled in Cincinnati. They had previously worked on a steamboat (Jonas as a fireman, Hannah as a chambermaid, and their son George as a cabin boy) and had traveled up the Red River "three hundred miles higher than any boat ever went before." They passed through the settlements of Choctaw, Cherokee, and other Indian tribes before their steamship was wrecked "2,500 miles above New Orleans." They traveled back down the river in canoes, and camped out along the river among "thousands of...crocodiles, alligators, bloodsuckers, vampires, and other dangerous water reptiles" and in the woods with bears and wolves, although Jonas chiefly complains about the mosquitoes and sand flies. At one point George came down with bilious fever, and Jonas writes that they ultimately spent most of their steamboat wages in getting home. Following the steamboat incident, Jonas determined that "I will be my own master as long as I stay in this country." He writes to his brother John of trying to repay a debt he owes him, although "it is desperate hard to work to get hold of money in this part of the country." Still, Jonas wrote to his brother George that provisions are cheap and "a man with a family is much better off here than in England," although the lack of "amusement" made it less appealing to single men. In a section to his sister Esther, Jonas notes that Hannah "has got many of the Yankee ways" and has become restless since "she has never been able to muster a baby since she left England." He concludes that his son George is sending them a walking stick and tea ground he got in trade from the Choctaw Indians in Texas. The letter is on a printed letterhead with an engraved image of Cincinnati.
mssHM 80135
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Rare Books
634816