Gleanings by the Way
Gleanings by the Way
Travel Journal written in 1849
Hi everyone, I’d love to share with you a short reading from a very old and rediscovered travel journal from 1849. This journal documents a journey from Newton NJ to Wisconsin and back. Travel was by foot, horseback, stage, steam boat, and the iron horse.
A little backstory: I found this journal in a collection of papers my Mother and Grandmother salvaged from teachers at the New Canaan Country Day School. My Grandmother served as head chef there for about thirty years. Their Frogtown Fair was always a favorite event to attend! My Mom framed a couple of the beautifully handwritten documents along with beautiful vintage doilies. I have this work hanging in my home. The rest of the collection was left boxed up in a time capsule. I’ll tell you more about this collection another time.
This past year I have been exploring, learning and prototyping my venture ideas with the C.O.A. Evolve Cohort that I was nominated to be in. My plan’s idea is to publish this journal into a book that shares the original handwritten cursive next to the transcribed words. I am looking forward to creating Illustrations of the route traveled and places visited to enhance my readers experience! If you’d like to follow along with my own journey of putting this all together, let me know! I would LOVE to have your feedback for different presentation concepts as I explore them.
For now, Sit back, and imagine yourself in a day where all the technologies we take for granted were still only far-fetched ideas that were possibly ONLY in their early experimental or conceptual stages.
Gleanings by the Way-
Wednesday June 20/1849- After breakfasting at Mr. B’s on good bread & coffee, we left Newton with our Carpet Bags on our backs, precisely 5 minutes past 5 o’c am for the far famed “Lake Country”, as happy & contentedly as we could possibly have been had we been seated in our coach & four of the best looking Ebony in the states to draw “the ribbons” at the word of command -
After a delightful walk of three hours, listening to the splendid music of the forest songsters and wondering why it was that people, who are capable of enjoying the beauties of nature and the music of those beautiful birds, would persist in sticking to their sluggish ways so different from ours, - we arrived at “Mount - Pisqah” nine miles from Newton, perfectly contended with ourselves, and all the world in the In the bargain -