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Hulme's Journal, 1818-19; Flower's Letters from Lexington and the Illinois, 1819; Flower's Letters from the Illinois, 1820-21; and Woods's Two Years' Residence, 1820-21 — Edition Insights
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Project Gutenberg
2015
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Illinois -- Description and travel; Edwards County (Ill.); Albion (Ill.) -- History; Lexington (Ky.) -- History; Frontier and pioneer life -- Illinois
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Edition facts
Words
110,174
Reading time
480 min
Text sections
11
The catalog record for Hulme's Journal, 1818-19; Flower's Letters from Lexington and the Illinois, 1819; Flower's Letters from the Illinois, 1820-21; and Woods's Two Years' Residence, 1820-21 — Edition Insights provides practical reading context through 110,174 words, 8 hr estimated reading time, and 11 detected text sections.
The text analysis averages about 24.7 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.
Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Illinois -- Description and travel,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.
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Project Gutenberg record #48119
Four firsthand accounts of early 19th-century travel and settlement in the Illinois country, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites. The narratives shift between Thomas Hulme's journal, Richard Flower's letters defending the English settlement at Albion, and John Woods's detailed observations of frontier life, with recurring attention to infrastructure, agriculture, and social customs.
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Birkbeck had recently (1817) published _Notes on a Journey in America_, and (1818) _Letters from Illinois_--honest, straightforward books, if somewhat optimistic in tone. Cobbett replied with _A Year's Residence in the United States of America_ (New York, 1818, and many subsequent editions), in which he made a savage attack on English Prairie, using as a weapon the journal of his follower, Thomas Hulme, lately returned from a visit to Illinois. Birkbeck and Richard Flower (father of George, the first founder), answered the strictures of Cobbett; and various other emigrants added their testimony. From this mass of controversial literature, we have chosen for inclusion in volume x of our series those publications which appear to us best to exemplify Western life and conditions, and contain the most varied descriptions of an English immigrant's impressions and experiences.
Thomas Hulme was an honest English farmer, with strong Radical tendencies, and in earnest sympathy with democratic institutions as he found them in America. The Introduction to his _Journal of a Tour in the Western Countries of America_--which we herein extract and reprint from Part III of his friend Cobbett's _A Year's Residence_--contains some autobiographical material. In explaining his object in coming to America, he declares: "I saw an absence of human misery. I saw a government taking away a very small portion of men's earnings. I saw ease and happiness and a fearless utterance of thought everywhere prevail." The only question with him was, in what region of America would it be best for him to settle. His visit to the "Western Countries" was undertaken with a view to examining agricultural and social conditions there. Travelling over the usual Pennsylvania road to Pittsburg, he voyaged down the Ohio, and thence went through Illinois. His notes along the way contain shrewd but useful observations on the route, the people he encountered, prices, and wages. Hulme has nothing adverse to say of the West. Cobbett, who first published this journal, uses it as a text; but in making it serve this purpose of detraction, he obviously wrests Hulme's words from their meaning. We have thought it desirable to reprint Hulme's _Journal_ apart from the mass of diatribe with which Cobbett originally enveloped it.
Richard Flower, whose _Letters from Lexington and the Illinois_ (London, 1819), and _Letters from the Illinois_ (London, 1822), herein reprinted, were first published in reply to Cobbett, was a man of culture and refinement, owner of a considerable estate in Hertford. In 1818, at the age of sixty-three, he sold his property and joined his eldest son, George, in promoting the colony to Illinois. The first winter in America was passed at Lexington, Kentucky, awaiting the preparation of a residence at Albion, the new Illinois town founded by his son in Edwards County. After his removal thither (July, 1819) he passed the rest of his life at this settlement, holding religious services for the infant colony, and in many ways serving as a medium of enlightenment and refinement in this distant region. He died in 1829. His _Letters_ are eminently sane and sensible. His comments upon the American character are appreciative and kindly, his chief strictures being upon the subject of slavery.
The major portion of our volume is devoted to a reprint of John Woods's _Two Years' Residence ... in the Illinois Country_ (London, 1822), detailing with precision the experiences of a well-to-do English farmer seeking a home in the new world. Woods was a matter-of-fact person, whose book has no pretensions to literary style; but it does present faithfully the average Englishman's impressions of persons and things in the United States of 1819-21. Landing in Baltimore, Woods bought conveyances that transported his family and goods over the new National Road to Wheeling, whence a flat-boat furnished their means of carriage down the Ohio River to Shawneetown, then the principal port of Illinois. From this point the immigrants walked overland to English Prairie, sending the baggage around by way of the Wabash and its tributaries. Arrived at the settlement, Woods bought of American pioneers lands that had already received some cultivation, and settled contentedly to build up a new farm in these rich regions. His experiences were typical; and while he expressly disclaims attempting to influence others intending to remove from England, yet his favorable pictures could not have failed of their effect.
The volume collects four distinct narratives from 1818–1821, each offering a different vantage point on the same emerging frontier. Thomas Hulme's journal moves methodically from the East Coast into the Ohio Valley, recording distances, prices, and the condition of roads and bridges. Richard Flower's letters, written in response to William Cobbett's criticisms, defend the English settlement at Albion with a polemical edge. John Woods's two-year residence provides the most systematic account, cataloging crops, livestock, and the habits of backwoodsmen. The editor, Reuben Gold Thwaites, frames these texts as primary documents of westward expansion, preserving the original prefaces and title pages.
Movement and Infrastructure
Hulme's journal is structured as a sequential itinerary, with each day's entry noting miles traveled, terrain, and the state of roads and waterways. He records the national road crossing the Monongahela at Brownsville, a bridge under construction with stone piers and wooden superstructure, and the novel practice of keeping to the right to avoid collisions. These details accumulate into a practical geography of early American travel. Woods similarly tracks distances and describes the condition of ferries, fords, and taverns. The narratives share a preoccupation with the physical obstacles of movement—muddy creeks, unimproved land, and the scarcity of bridges—and the incremental improvements being made. Both authors treat infrastructure as a measure of civilization's advance.
Agriculture and Land Use
Woods devotes sustained attention to farming practices: the planting of fruit trees without grafting, the tapping of sugar maples in February, and the construction of water-meadows for irrigation. He notes that Americans seldom bud or graft fruit trees, simply planting the stone. Hulme observes a woman milking a cow by the roadside who offers apples from her orchard and boasts of nearly paying off her farm. These vignettes illustrate the mix of subsistence and market agriculture. Flower's letters, by contrast, argue for the fertility of Illinois prairies and the viability of English-style farming, countering Cobbett's skepticism. The texts together document a landscape in transition from forest to field.
Social Encounters and Customs
Hulme records chance meetings with settlers who share their stories: a woman who would not give a cent to call King George her uncle, a camp-meeting site where Methodists prayed four times daily for days on end. These encounters reveal the social fabric of the frontier—its independence, religiosity, and oral culture. Woods describes the habits of backwoodsmen, their log houses, and their hospitality. Flower's letters, written to an English audience, explain the social organization of the English settlement at Albion, including its landholding patterns and community governance. The narratives thus move between individual anecdotes and broader social commentary.
Polemical Undercurrents
Richard Flower's letters are explicitly defensive, written to refute misrepresentations by William Cobbett. The prefaces by Benjamin Flower and the publisher frame the letters as correctives. This polemical layer distinguishes Flower's contributions from the more neutral observations of Hulme and Woods. The volume as a whole, edited by Thwaites, preserves these disputes, allowing readers to see how early settlement was debated in print. Hulme's journal, originally published with a preface by Cobbett himself, adds another dimension: the same editor who championed Hulme later became the target of Flower's rebuttals. The structure of the volume thus mirrors the contentious nature of frontier promotion.
Readers approaching this collection should attend to the different genres at work: the travel journal, the polemical letter, and the ethnographic survey. Each author writes with a distinct purpose, and their accounts sometimes contradict one another. The editor's notes and prefaces provide context but do not resolve these tensions. For a full picture of the English settlement in Illinois, the texts are best read in sequence, noting how each builds on or challenges the previous one.
There’s something tender about these old settlers’ diaries—their careful notes on fences and weather, as if permanence might be written down in time. Reading them, I felt the ache of places that were new once, then lived-in. That same wistfulness found me later in In Tamal Land — A Reader’s Guide, though the landscape there is softer, more forgiving. Both left me with that quiet, lonely warmth of watching a place become a home.
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