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

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.