[Indiana]

[Manuscript Letter from an Early Settler of Indiana, with Wonderful Content on the Development of the State]

Terre Haute: July 15, 1835. [4]pp. Quarto, on a folded folio sheet. Old folds, minor wear. Very good. Item #5260

Lengthy and interesting letter providing an account of a New Englander's travels across the young state as written to his sister. "I left St. Louis a week ago Saturday, and proceeded to Vincennes on the Wabash River, a place of perhaps 4000 inhabitants, the oldest in the state. Its settlement bears date two years back of Philadelphia. It is situated in one of the most fertile valleys in the west and its progress is a written comment upon the intelligence, character & enterprise of the French who first settled this country. The bottom lands of the Wabash are among the best in the world, and are in places 15 miles wide. The opening of the roads to the place will root out the old inhabitants and build up a thriving commercial town." He travels from Vincennes down to Evansville, noting that though thriving, it's not much to look at: "The place has 10,000 inhabitants 2/3 German. Is quite a place of business but the bigger portion do not want any improvement hence the place does not look very inviting." He does note the thriving corn crop -- "much of it was 70 bushels an acre without any manure. Some difference from raising corn in Old Oxford."

Writing from Terre Haute, he finds it far more to his liking: "This is a fine place of about 8000 inhabitants with fine streets, a fine park & court house and many fine buildings. A fine river and fine bottomlands finely cultivated and there are fine bluffs rising in the distance miles away -- amidst a sea of green. I like this part of Indiana." He goes on to comment on how fortunate it was this area hadn't been open to settlement earlier: "for once they had seen the lovely immense the fertile West, New England never would have been settled and we had never had the stern intelligent self-relying Yankees." His journey takes him on to Indianapolis and then Lafayette "& so on back among the Quakers again." A wonderful description of early Indiana, with the author drawing the stark contrast between the easy farmlands of the Midwest and the rocky soils of New England.

Price: $650.00