The Wabash

Two volumes by a member of the English gentry, travelling in the early 1850s with “a large family of children” as a result of which they were “…brought into contact with much of which a single male traveller hears and sees nothing. I had to make thoughtful provision for our slow progress in the interior, where he would have sped fearlessly onward in his stagecoach or steamer. This has enabled me to describe much that he never sees. My endeavor has been to represent, in these pages, what we saw and felt: consequently, they must contain much that is personal; much that is light, frivolous, anecdotical; much also that is dark and sorrowing; for such was the course of our travels.”

Some of the chapter-headings and sub-topics from the Tables of Contents for the two volumes are:

Volume 1
-Bordeaux; residence in a convent.
-”The Kate Hunter”; search for a vessel, Torbay, life on board, icebergs, the Pilot.
-New York; Quarantine, Broadway, American omnibuses.
-The River and the Railroad; A sharp man, the river boat, the Hudson, Albany, first class trains.
-Niagara Falls; Buffalo, the railway accident, the runaway slaves, Canadian and American manners.
-Lake Erie; emigration, Sandusky city, log-houses and frame-houses, agriculture of Ohio.
-Cincinnati; Queen city of the West, the Catholics, the upper crust of Cincinnati, the ladies’ saloon.
-The Ohio; Plan for emancipation of slaves, vineyards, cholera.
-Indianapolis; a spirit shop, The Capitol, buying horses, American newspapers, fashionable shops.
-The Wagon; our new equipage, highway robbers, the cholera house, the National Road, records of children.

Volume 2
-Terre Haute; Physicians on the Wabash, fears for our child.
-The Death; The little sufferer, preparations for death, the mother’s despair, a funeral on the Wabash.
-The Illness; Medical consultations, more illness, sportsmen in the backwoods.
-The Prairie Hotel; an hotel in the backwoods, the dandies from Cincinnati, murder of our landlord, 4th of July.
-Society on the Wabash; Flirtations, American women, education in convents, the dressmakers and our daughters.
-Life in Indiana; our neighbors, topography of Terre Haute, the lawsuit, the ladies of Terre Haute.
-The Election; Colonel Harrison, an Indiana country house, vote by ballot, the candidates.
-The Wabash Canal; electric telegraphs, New Harmony, the canal boat, manners of American farmers.
-The Great Lakes; Fine ladies, Lake Ontario, the United States and Mexico.
-The Emigrant; religious equality, Roman agents, warning to European Catholics, free states or slave states.