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The White family, headed by Roswell Newcomb, and his wife, Jane Osgood, homesteaded on a parcel to the east of Richard Wray’s farm on English Prairie Road around 1838. Roswell was born in 1809 In New York and was a carpenter and a wood engraver. Once settled, he would often go away from the Prairie for short stints when he could find engraving work. He went to Chicago for four years but Jane stayed here and ran the homestead. They had seven children born between 1830 and 1851.
In January 1848, a post office was established on English Prairie, with Hen D. Huff as postmaster. The Whites were prolific letter writers and by some stroke of luck, the letters are all preserved in the collection of the Plainview History Center of Minnesota. The letters start in the year 1848 and go to the early 1860s. The correspondence gives us a priceless picture of day-to-day life back then.
The earliest letters are between the family and oldest child, Elizabeth, in 1848 & 1849. Elizabeth was only 18 and went to take a teaching job in Hainesville (although her mother had hoped she would teach instead at English Prairie School). Her friend, Charlotte Bowen of Hainesville, beseeched her to take the job there, saying English Prairie was “more of a back place”. Back then the 15-mile distance would have been a day and a half buggy ride.
Excerpts of the first letters are somewhat mundane. In September 1848, her mother wrote “Dear Lib, Rather than you should have a fit, I will try and write you a few lines. But you must not expect much as there does not seem to be much news except your father has gone to Racine to do a small job of work…” Sister Anna wrote: “Mother says I must finish this letter but I really don’t know what to write for there is nothing going on except the old routine of everyday and work…” And sister Jane said, “Lib, The days and weeks walk very slow when you are gone, and I hope you will be home, but I must stop now for I cannot think of anything more to write…”
But on June 1, 1849 Anna wrote to Elizabeth about a trip the family took to Chicago. Her brother Charles Osgood and sister Jane went to “an entertainment” where they saw “a little flea” that looked “as big as an elephant thru a microscope.” But as soon as their father got paid for a job, they left for the “country”, i.e. English Prairie, as they were “very impatient to be there”.
Anna described their travel back: “We started from Chicago last Friday, and arrived (by boat) at South Port (Kenosha) about half past three in the afternoon... We stayed at a tavern that night and reached the prairie about eleven Monday morning. We’re home! But, oh! Conscience, what a home, for it is so dirty that it has taken us all this week to get it so that we begin to see the floor…I expect I have lost all my clothes for we have not seen my trunk and I presume it was left on board the boat, which has gone to Buffalo. Mr. Huff or Carpenter…was going to send a telegraphic dispatch to Buffalo…to see if it was on board. We have all been well since you left, except a little sea sickness. You must excuse the writing for we have been whitewashing so much that my fingers are as stiff as pokers.”
In June 1849, a long letter from Elizabeth’s aunt, Maria Osgood, in New York, implored her not to, “indulge the thought that we shall ever forget you.” Brother Charles wrote he got his arm “broke by an Irish boy that they call Pat”, and her sister Jane wrote, “I go to school now and I like the school very much, but not so well as the school in Chicago, for the little girls swear there. I like the country a great deal better than Chicago for it is so pleasant.”
By September 1849, Elizabeth wrote she was homesick, for that “loved, loved place where I have passed so many bright happy hours, seeing, “the children swinging or playing with the cats and puppy and Charles driving the cows home, grandmother going to take a walk in the woods and Anna fixing to milk.”
A letter from Aunt Abitha A. Erwin in New York, postmarked December 1849 is the last letter to Elizabeth. Abitha describes when she saw a daguerreotype photo of Elizabeth’s family that she, “could not speak for a moment for there you all were. Your father and mother have not altered much. But it does not seem possible that the young ladies I see there can be the little girls that used to run after me and call me Aunt Batha. And Charles is grown and such a fine noble looking boy…your grandmother Osgood sleeps with the daguerreotype under her head every night.”
Elizabeth died of scarlet fever on February 13, 1850, although her headstone says February 1849. The letters above described are dated past February 1849, and the obituary and the Federal Census Death Register affirm her death date as 1850, so it is unclear why the stone is dated as it is. Although it was feared in the 1800s, scarlet fever is no longer associated with deadly epidemics since the advent of antibiotics.
I want to thank Darcy Starkweather Bridgeman for forwarding the wonderful treasure trove of letters which open a window to the past for us to see and which we will still be exploring. Next time...why Elizabeth had two brothers named Charles Osgood and other tales from the Prairie.
Story by Laura Frumet
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