(Editor’s Note: The is the third and final part of the A Trip on the Erie Canal series. The third part is a continuation of a letter from Jay Myer’s Great Uncle Ben to his younger sister, Elizabeth. Ben was 10 and Elizabeth was 4 when the trip took place. Ben wrote the letter at age 70.)

“Went to Chicago in a hurry and they were afraid the boat would strike a sand bar and break it in t[w]o. They had to anchor in front of the village. The anchors held and we staid and rocked and teetered for one day and night throwing up everything they had ate for the past six months.

In the morning the wind changed. The lake smoothed over and we got up steam and went for the pier at the mouth of the river, just beginning a harbor. We were a happy lot of people and many of them were so sick they could hardly walk after they got on land.

Father hustled around and got a team and took us all up to hotel. I think the name was the Eagle Hotel. It was the 6th day of June 1842, the day of the great land sale when all the land came into market in the northern part of Illinois. There were a great many coming in from all over the country. Along about noon I saw two men come in on horseback and I heard them say something and I went and told Father I thought they were someone he knew. He went out to the stable where they were. One was Moses Esty, the other John Stearne, Jr. Father knew Moses, but not John, who later became his son-in-law.

That night Mr. Esty found two men with teams right from his neighborhood who brought something to market and were going home empty. The next morn Mr. Boswell and Amos Bennett, a colored man, began to load the goods, and the next morn started bright and early (the 7th day of June 1842) on the last day of our journey into the far west as it was called at that time (it being the fifteenth day on road.)

We left the village of Chicago of about 4,000 inhabitants through mud and water (they had been having some heavy rains) for a number of miles it being a very flat and level country.

The first place I remember was Powell Tavern a stopin place 7 or 8 miles out. About noon we came to Half Day where we stoped and fed the horses and all took dinner in a log hotel. After dinner, started on the next place they called Independence Grove, a nice country with a fine large grove and three or four log houses. Now it is a fine village called Libertyville.

We kept going and about dark we arrived at our stopping place after going 40 miles in a lumber wagon with all the springs of the axel trees, so it rode easy over the soft ground, part of way without any track.

We arrived at Mr. David Gilmores [where lived] a couple of middle aged people without children who came out about two years before from the east from the town of Stoughton, Mass. They were living in a small log house. Father settled with the men that brought us up and they went on home, about two miles farther near the Des Plaine River. Mr. Bennett, the blackest man I ever saw, made his brags that he was the first white man that planted corn on the west side of Des Plains River.

Mother, Augusta, Alonzo and Lizzie stayed at Mr. G’s for a week or two until we got a fine log mansion to live in. Father, G.L. and Frank went up about one mile to Mr. Moses Estys that night. Dark and across the Prairies [and] without any track and with the wolves howling behind us (the first we ever heard) and it made us boys a little nervous and we took hold of Fathers hand and kept close the rest of way.

Shall never forget that log house we went into that night with wooden hinges and latch to door, the puncheon floor made from split logs, the scuttle with ladder to loft where we crawled with the other boys when we went to bed up there under the shakes or split shingles, put on with poles without nails. The fire was a wonder to us boys from the east that never saw any like it before but happy. ”

From B.F. (Benjamin Franklin) Shepard

This ends the letter written by Ben to his younger sister, Elizabeth, in 1912.

Note: In Fred Shepard’s letter written at white River Indian Agency, Meeker, Colorado in 1879 he told of entertaining Indians by playing a violin. This was probably the same violin purchased for $1.00 in Rochester as told abut in above letter written by uncle. Fred was killed at age 21 in the Meeker Massacre.