Getting Places in the Old Midwest

Somewhere Bill Bryson writes that Midwesterners are never happier than when they're arguing over how to get from point A to point B. But it's easy to forget how recent is our ability even to do that!

Juliette Kinzie's Wau-Bun: The "Early Day" in the North-west recounts more than one trip between central Wisconsin and Chicago in the early 1830s where their party spent significant time being completely lost, no cabins in sight, and low on food.

My son's new compilation of Selected Readings on the Life and Work of Frances Ann Wood Shimer includes her tales of travel to Mount Carroll (Carroll County), Illinois in the early 1850s, when the train west of Milwaukee stopped at Janesville, and nobody in Freeport seemed to know even where Mount Carroll was!

Travelers' accounts are valuable supplements to history, among other things because they mention facts that we want to know but the residents just took for granted.



Harold Henderson, "Getting Places in the Old Midwest," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Illinois' winter quarterly with German pioneers

The centerpiece of the Winter 2007 isue of the Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly is part 2 of Gary Beaumont's "German Immigrant Farmers in Illinois," featuring letters from Jacob Menke, who settled near Beardstown (Cass County) in the 1830s, and a diary by Johann Konrad Dahler, who settled near Mount Carroll (Carroll County) in the 1850s.

"Around us there are about 20 German farmers," wrote Menke, "including three medical practitioners with a degree, jurists, theologists, mechanics, even a mayor of Giesen, foresters etc. -- very educated people with whom we have a very pleasant contact.... We are likely to establish a reading or literary circle and a club..."

Dahler on the winter of 1856-57: "From beginning to end there was deep snow, on which smooth ice three inches thick had formed. When we needed firewood and went with the oxen to drag it in, they would go perhaps three paces on the ice and then break through.... We lost our 2 cows, which had cost 30 dollars apiece. We had a log stable for them and slough hay for feed but we lacked straw for bedding in the extreme cold."

Other articles:

"Illinois Resources: Where From to Kansas? Illinois!" by Cherie Weible

"Alderman Protects Family Graveyard," by Jeanie Lowe

"The Digital Revolution in Genealogical Research: What's Coming from Family Search, Part 1," by Susan A. Anderson

"Six Degrees of Separation or Two: Applications for 'Cluster Genealogy' and 'Genealogy Buddies,''' by Margaret M . Kapustiak

"Are You Killing the Things You Love?" by Patricia L. Miller

"Ask the Retoucher!" by Eric Curtis M. Basir

"Richard F. Sutton's Story: A Revolutionary War Soldier, Part 1," by Raleigh Sutton