A Glimpse of Savanna and Prairie in 1838

Below is a tender, observant letter from a husband describing to his wife and boys back in Vermont what they might find if they agreed to move with him to savanna and prairie country.

I haven’t seen references to this letter in the literature. So when I ran across it again recently, deep in a pile of old papers, I thought I should share before it got lost again.

These eye-witness accounts are from John H. Wells who travelled through Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, looking for a place for his family to settle, and wrote down his practical and aesthetic impressions in a letter to his wife on August 7, 1838. 

The original savanna landscapes are gone. Many of us look for clues to what they were like. Wells refered to “Oak openings” - an alternate name for oak savannas. He used varied spellings, including “prairy” or "prary" for “prairie.”

 

Somme Prairie Grove - an Illinois black-soil savanna on June 28, 2021

First: six short passages that seemed especially compelling:

 

“The State of Michigan is yet almost entirely a meadow Country as it is not necessary for a farmer to clear the land before he gets a Crop. The whole Country Consists almost entirely of Oak openings. The trees are from 6 feet to 2, 4 & 6 rods apart. [A rod is 16.5 feet, so trees 6 rods apart would be 99 feet distant from each other.] Some underbrush weeds & grass cover the face of the ground, the former from 2 to 4 feet high, these are mown down & burn’d and then the land is fit for the plough which is first done by 4 to 6 yoke of oxen in the summer and nothing more is done but to plant or sow the ground and drop in the seed, The trees are then girdled and left standing. And many men who raise from one to two thousand bushels of grain, have not 20 acres of cleard land on their farms. Some of the Oak openings are very beyutiful in a state of nature and very open, so that we could often see half a mile and more each side of the road …

 

“… to provide … fresh meat, that I do by shooting as many quails as we need some of them I kill without getting out of the wagon. They are very fat and fine. Mr P picks them as we drive along.”

 

“I found all the lakes, ponds & streams in Michigan much purer than I expected most of them so pure that the bottom can be seen 10 and 12 feet in depth. There are however many marshes interspersed through the country most of which are unhealthy. At times we saw also many beautiful small lakes & ponds all full of fish."

“Thus far the Prairy’s are by far the most beautiful and fertile of any part of the Country… We have passed through the following Prairies in our Journey: Cold Water, Sturgis, White Pigeon. Four Mile Prairy. De Coupee and Rolling Prairy. … They are new objects to me and very beautiful. ”  

 

“We passed a squatter on a reserv’d trail west of the St Josephs river, Mr Vanderhoof … he and his son … When they first went there the Country was full of Indians and they had to purchase of them the privilege of cultivating the land.”

 

“The rolling prairy was offer’d at Auction six years ago by government at ten shillings the acre and not taken by any one. Now it is worth twenty five dollars … now producing great crops for many miles in extent.”   

 

A typed transcription of the letter (not altogether accurate) is below … and then, below that, is the amazing photocopy of the actual letter:

Perhaps because paper or postage was expensive, after the first page the letter is written across the page in both directions - that is, filling the page horizontally and then turning it vertical and filling it again. It’s easy to read in both directions, once you get used to it, although the copy fades out in some areas, and some of the writing is challenging. John Wells' spelling may be kinda random, but his handwriting is elegant!

And finally, here’s a generous letter written by John F. Nygren, who sent me the copies of this precious document in 1993. 

 

Endnotes

In my "six short quotes," I made a few changes from the typescript, that seemed more accurate or possibly helpful to the reader. I don't know who made the typescript. The most significant change is of the word "crop" to "grass" in this sentence: 

"Some underbrush weeds & crop cover the face of the ground ..."

To my eye, the actual letter clearly says "grass" - using the "the long s" that so amuses people today when they read the original Declaration of Independence.   

I used to think I'd carefully make my own typescript some day, but I never did. 

Thanks to Eriko Kojima for proofing and edits to this post.