Rare Books Cataloger Lindsay Weaver gives us a glimpse into the lives of everyday folk of the American frontier– through an 1830s letter from the collections of the Lilly Library!
In the early days of 1839, a nineteen-year-old Joseph Palmer Smith in Conneaut, Ohio, wrote on behalf of his immediate family to his oldest sister, Betsey, who lived some 500 miles away in Endfield, Connecticut. He apologizes for the collective failure of his older siblings to write to her (whose responsibility it apparently was). At the time of writing, few of his many siblings still lived in the family home–all but Hezekiah Jr. and Harriet had grown and moved out. But Hezekiah was boarding at school that winter, both Harriet and his mother were in poor health, and his father had just lost all but two fingers to frostbite (!), so it seems that young Joseph finally decided to take the “indispensable duty” of writing to Betsey into his own hands.
Joseph P. Smith (1820-1901) was the youngest son of Hezekiah Smith (1774-1857) and Rebecca Parker (1777-1858). For many years, the Smiths resided in Ashford, Connecticut, where the majority of their twelve children were born. Sometime between 1816 and 1818, they relocated to Springfield Township, Pennsylvania, where the last two children were born. Not long after, the family moved again, this time to Conneaut, Ohio, one county over. We don’t know what exactly brought the Smiths to the American frontier, but we do know why Betsey no longer lived with them in 1839: in 1826, she had returned to Connecticut to marry Elisha B. Johnson and stayed.
Betsey’s decision to marry Elisha came at a steep cost. Today, the journey between Endfield and Conneaut is a 7-9 hour drive by car on paved roads depending on your determination to avoid tolls. In 1839, the trip could take as long as six weeks by ox-team, which discouraged frequent family visits. It also prohibited easy communication. The purpose of Joseph’s letter, he informs her, is to “let you know the state of our healths and the transactions that have taken place since we have heard from you,” which, based on the letter’s internal evidence, appears to have been about seven years prior–almost inconceivable in today’s world of instant hyper-connectivity.
The Smiths were not, in the grand scheme of things, important people. Based on Joseph’s fluent handwriting, standardized spelling, and later photographs of him and his siblings, the family apparently enjoyed a certain degree of prosperity; but overall they were ordinary people living ordinary lives. For this reason, surviving correspondence of families like the Smiths is precious because it’s often not collected or preserved with the same dedication as the documents of the well-known or historically significant. That’s a pity because letters like this one often provide compelling glimpses into the everyday life and concerns of average people in times gone by in ways that make history seem real and immediate. In this case, Joseph writes to a sister who left home while he was still very young, confessing: “Although you are unknown to me the ties of nature seem to bind us together. I entertain some hopes of one day seeing your face. It seems hard that we must be separated in life.”
This letter is also noteworthy for other reasons. To begin with, it’s the sort of document every genealogist or family historian fantasizes about. With incredible detail, Joseph briefly rehearses the current state of affairs for each of his siblings (as well as two uncles), often stating where they live, who they married and when, and who has died. He also writes to her of a collective twelve new nieces and nephews, how many are still living, and often the gender ratio for each family. (Thank you, sir!)
Another point of interest is the way Joseph includes religious concerns alongside the other traditional “transactions” of birth, death, and marriage. In 1839, the United States was nearing the end of a period of intense religious revival known today as the Second Great Awakening, which caused many Americans to evaluate their own spiritual lives and often prompted them to affiliate with organized Christian churches or other religious movements. The Smiths also lived near–and likely travelled through–Western New York, which by the 1830s was known as a “burned-over district” because of the way in which revivals and other forms of religious enthusiasm had swept through like wildfire. It’s unlikely that the Smith family would have been untouched by the widespread religious fervor, and for the younger children like Joseph, it would have been all they knew. On the subject of their mother, Joseph poetically observes that although her health is failing, “she trusts in God that she shall land her soul on the fair banks of deliverance where the wicked shall cease from troubling and the weary soul shall be at rest.” He also reports on the recent conversions of two of their siblings: their brother Nelson and his family “experienced religion last winter and joined the Christian Church” and their sister Harriet had become a Methodist since they last spoke. Finally, he concludes with a desire for information about the state of Betsey’s own soul, wanting to “know how you are a getting along in the world and also your hopes beyond the grave for we feel very anxious to hear from you.” Religion would remain important to Joseph throughout his life. He became a deacon in the Universalist Church and in his will, bequeathed $100 to his local Universalist community for the purpose of obtaining a place of worship if they did so within five years of his death.
In the end, it seems the precarious age and health of Joseph’s parents, especially his mother, was the impetus behind the letter. “Mother feels very anxious to see you once more,” he writes. “We understood that you was a coming out here next summer. We should be very much pleased to see you. If you calculate to see your parents this side of the grave, you must come soon.”
We don’t know whether Betsey did indeed expedite her planned visit, but Rebecca apparently survived the “few more [turns]” that Joseph insisted would shortly kill her. In fact, both she and her husband withstood nearly 20 years more, living out their days in Conneaut. Joseph, meanwhile, would leave in 1843 to move even further west to Pike County, Illinois. There he would live for fifty years, raising ten children with his wife, Mary Ann Huntley. One hopes he kept writing letters…
About the Author: Lindsay Weaver is a Lilly Library staff cataloger and a PhD candidate in Musicology. Her dissertation focuses on music fandom in nineteenth-century Paris. During the 1830s, her paternal-line ancestors lived roughly 20 miles away from the Smiths.
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