Buffalo Grove April 23rd 1852? 

 

Parents and sisters

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Thinking perhaps that by this time you are wondering where I am and why I’ve not written home I now catch a few minutes to inform you and to excuse myself .

The second day after leaving Franklin I embarked on Lake Erie at Erie for Toledo with the expectation of landing there the next morning but the boat after proceeding a few miles became fast in the ice and remained so for two days. She then made out to go on a little farther and again became fast.

We were now some five miles from shore and provisions became short and we were put on two meals a day and sometimes scant at that. 

About the fourth day a boat came near enough to bring us some provisions but took off none of the passengers. After remaining on board for a week, I with some 70 others reached the shore by travelling over the ice something like 10 miles. The wind had been blowing down the lake for two or three days and the mass of ice in which the boat was fast was floating fast towards Buffalo. We had rather a perilous journey leaping from cake to cake and over broad chasms, a part of the ice floating and the rest remaining fast frozen to the shore. We all broke through often and but few got ashore with dry feet and some fell through and were drawn out by others.

The next day the ice was stronger and nearly all left the boat. In this weeks time we had advanced backwards 23 miles. So again we took the cars and went to Erie and there we took the stage 60 miles and then the cars to Cleveland and there we took a boat and went on to Toledo and the wind blowed severely and we were most all sea sick and for 12 long hours I felt O! awful and we stayed overnight at Toledo and then went on in the cars to Chicago and we got there about 11 or 12 oclock at night and there I with 6 or 8 more had to sleep on the floor for the beds at the public houses were all full, and then we went on to Batavia and there I stayed 12 days and might have written home but did not feel like it and then I came on here and I got here night before last and yesterday I hunted and fished all day with the girls and Dan. and a couple of young fellows, cousins of Maria, and today I’m idling round but I feel as if I was in a hurry and can’t write much neither to describe places nor scenery nor anything else and tomorrow I go to the Mississippi where I expect to meet with my companions and when I get to St. Josephs I mean to write and tell you many things. 

So now for the present you have all for I’m not in a communicative mood and if I was as talkative as the crow I could not relate to you all my adventures if I should set and write till the sun sinks in the west and it is now not quite 11 oclock. Ade teaches a village school this summer which she will commence Monday next and Maria is going to teach too. You must accept of this as an apology for a letter and I promise to do better if ever I can find leisure and not feel that my moments are too precious to spend sitting making scratches.

Whit-

to his friends at home

 

(note added in pencil)

When going from Walton to Hancock I left at a hotel my umbrella and from Hancock I wrote back to the tavern keeper to send it by the stage driver to Franklin and have it left with George Reynolds. It would be well enough for someone to enquire of Reynolds whether the umbrella is there.