The Broad Lakes Roll Between Us:
Wisconsin Women's Letters Home
Cathy
Palmini, Associate Professor in the University Library, has published "'The
Broad Lakes Roll Between Us: Wisconsin Women's Letters Home" in
Inland Seas: the Quarterly Journal of the Great Lakes Historical Society,
59/1 (Spring 2003): 46-57. The article presents the firsthand accounts of
four mid-1800s women settlers who made the perilous journey from the eastern
United States or Europe via steamship across the Great Lakes to new Wisconsin
homes.
Cathy's
previous work includes her thesis on pioneer women prepared for the Master's
degree in English at UWSP (Pioneer
Women of the Prairie: Portraits from the Novels of O.E. Rolvaag and
Willa Cather and the Personal Writings of Pioneer Women, 1991), and an article,
"Across
the Unknown Waters to Wisconsin: The Migration Narratives of Four Women Settlers"
published in Transactions of The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and
Letters 88 (2000): 105-120. The migration narratives work has also been
presented at Wisconsin library conferences and most recently at the national
Women's Private Writing/Writing Women's History Conference June 15-18, 2000 at
the University of New England, Portland, Maine.
The accounts chronicle a range of experiences including seasickness, storms, children almost lost, and a sense of loneliness for loved ones left behind.
1868 poster for the side-wheel steamer
Northwest, departing from Detroit |
|
 Ann Chaney, letter, 1850. Ms. MAD 4/14/SC 119 (courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives) |
The four unique female voices portray not only difficult circumstances but good food, singing and dancing, lively company, and a sense of wonder at new sights. The letter at left was written by Ann Chaney to her mother in September 1850, providing details of Chaney's journey with four daughters to Join her husband, Frederick, a London house painter who had settled in Fond du Lac in 1849. The five of them traveled the Atlantic on an immigrant vessel to Toronto, where they traversed lakes Ontario, Erie, and Michigan by steamboats, also traveling by horse car and railroad to finally arrive in Sheboygan. In November 1850 Ann's daughter Clara wrote her grandmother: "We enjoyed ourselves very much barring the difficulties we met with, but Mother says she should know better how to manage if she had to travel again, and we should not think much of such a journey again." The article is illustrated by period photos and drawings from the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives and Samuel Ward Stanton's American Steam Vessels (New York: Smith & Stanton, 1895). |
On sabbatical during the Spring semester of 2002-03, Cathy is researching her next project, "Loneliness and Landscape: Women’s Voices from Settlement Arizona and Wisconsin" in Tucson, at the Arizona Historical Society Archives and the University of Arizona Archives. "Loneliness and Landscape" will compare the writings (diaries, letters, and reminiscences) of Wisconsin and Arizona pioneer women with special attention to expressions of loneliness and response to landscape. |
 Great Lakes steamboat Michigan, built in 1833 (Stanton, Samuel Ward. American Steam Vessels) |
Illustrations and quotations courtesy of the author, the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, and Samuel Ward Stanton's American Steam Vessels (New York: Smith & Stanton, 1895).