Search

In this diary, seventeen-year old Elizabeth Tuttle described the places she visited, sharing her impressions of travel, people, buildings, gardens, institutions, and other items on a journey through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

In May 1836, seventeen-year old Elizabeth and her parents left Newark "on an excursion partly to visit western friends, and partly to see the far famed West." The family's travels by land and water took them to many cities and towns, including Philadelphia, Lancaster, and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Akron in Ohio; and Niagara Falls, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and Poughkeepsie in New York. In this very interesting diary, Elizabeth described the places she visited, sometimes in exquisite detail, sharing her impressions of travel, people, buildings, gardens, institutions, and everything else on the journey that piqued her interest.

Elizabeth recorded her encounters with the many people she and her family met on their trip. At the beginning of the trip, Elizabeth and her parents met the "gentlemanly" Judge John Banks of Pennsylvania, who had been a member of Congress, elected on an Anti-Masonic platform. Several days later, she was introduced to Judge Goddard from Connecticut and his family. Once the Tuttles got to Cincinnati, they saw many old friends and acquaintances, especially those who had lived in Newark. They stayed with their friends the Blachlys on Sycamore Street. Elizabeth paid visits to Miss Grandon, "a former boarder at the Academy;" Charley Hornblower, a hardware store merchant; and Mr. Messer, the former principal of Newark Academy. At least three ministers from Newark had moved to Ohio: Rev. Baxter Dickinson, professor of sacred rhetoric at Lane Seminary; Rev. Richards of Auburn Theological Seminary; and Rev. Philip Hay of the Geneva Lyceum.

The Tuttles were members of the First Presbyterian Church in Newark, founded in 1667, and were keenly interested in religion and the intellectual pursuit of Christianity. On their travels, they not only attended Presbyterian services, but they also visited Methodist and Roman Catholic churches, and a Shaker village. Of the German Separatist settlement of Zoar, Elizabeth wrote: "in order and neatness, they resemble the Shakers, as well as in their being a community of interests and under one temporal head....In one field, where they were making hay, there were eighteen persons working, fourteen of them were females all dressed alike." Their intellectual curiosity extended as well to education, reform, politics, and social culture. They toured the Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, the Ohio Deaf and Dumb Asylum, a penitentiary in Columbus (where "300 male convicts and one negro woman" were confined), a coal factory, a cotton factory, a college and female seminary in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the Auburn Theological Seminary, and a prison in Auburn, N.Y.

On the trip back to Newark, Elizabeth frequently noted the trials of traveling by various means of transportation, including carriage, stage, canalboat, and steamboat. Travel was far from smooth and comfortable. For example, when they left London, Ohio, Elizabeth and her mother were seated on a large trunk situated over the back wheels of a barouche. "The driver thought by going through the woods, he would miss some of the mud, and he did in part, but such a jouncing as we had, I never want again, that over the back wheels, on a trunk constantly slipping forward, it was too much....The driver then got two boards, fastened to the top, Ma and I taking the middle one, we thought a board a great luxury." Finally, on July 14, they made their "last start for home, sweet home," arriving in Newark that evening.

The collection includes two journals kept by Isaac Robson while traveling as a Quaker minister. One records his observations while touring France and Italy in 1864 to visit Quakers, Vaudois, and Protestants, and the other documents his trip to Canada and the United States from 1870 to 1871 to attend Quaker meetings. Seven letters, principally written by Isaac Robson to his wife Sarah while he was in America, are at the end of the collection.

The collection includes two journals kept by Isaac Robson while traveling as a Quaker minister. One records his observations while touring France and Italy in 1864 to visit with Quakers, Vaudois, and Protestants, and the other documents his trip to Canada and the United States from 1870 to 1871 to attend Quaker meetings. Seven letters, principally written by Isaac Robson to his wife Sarah while he was in America, are at the end of the collection.

The journal Isaac Robson kept while in France and Italy spans from August 20, 1864, to November 11, 1864. Robson traveled through Southern France and Italy as a Quaker minister with his colleague Charles Fox of Falmouth, visiting Quakers and attending to Vaudois (Waldenses) and Protestant congregations. Robson commented on Catholics, priests, Protestants and anti-Protestant prejudice, and general religious practice and feeling throughout the region. He distributed religious tracts and observed local customs, reflecting on labor, education, and good will engendered by the prior visit of Quaker minister William Forster. This journal includes both original manuscript writings and carbon copies in different hands, with some variance in content.

Robson's American journal is a carbon copy, beginning as he boarded the Java in May 1870, headed to New York for a tour of Canadian and American Quaker meetings, and ending upon his arrival in Philadelphia at the end of March 1871. Robson's itinerary took him through New England, portions of Southern Canada, several mid-Western states, including Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa, and the border states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Robson's principal object was to visit Quaker meetings, attending both isolated local meetings and larger Yearly Meetings. He frequently visited Friends' schools and commented extensively on local Quakers' lifestyles, labor, and religious practices. Robson visited with Wilburite and Hicksite meetings and reflected on the persisting schisms in American Quakerism.

While passing through Canada, Robson described frontier communities, Canadian attitudes toward England and the United States, and social and religious practices. He included three small drawings of a "shanty," a "Log house," and a "Frame house" to illustrate dwellings in southern Ontario (page 33). In the United States, Robson's interest in social matters drew his attention to African Americans, Native Americans, women, religious revivalism, schools, and penitentiary systems.

Robson commented on his encounters with African Americans and Quakers' interactions with them throughout his tour. He regularly wrote about African American religion, education, labor, and changing relationships in the South between planters and those they formerly enslaved. While in Arkansas, he visited with Friends Calvin and Alida Clark, and he discussed their work with African Americans at the Southland College and the white community's hostile reactions to them (pages 119-122). Throughout his journal Robson also noted the lasting physical, social, and economic impacts of the Civil War.

Robson mentioned information about the Quaker's Indian Affairs Committee and other Quaker involvement with Native Americans (pages 89 and 22), and he also wrote passing details relating to North American Indians in general. He included a sketch of Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, "so called from its having been used as a guiding mark by the Indians" (page 100). While in Iowa, Robson visited Lawrie Tatum (1822-1900), a Quaker Indian agent to the Kiowa and Comanche at Fort Sill, and he recorded some of Tatum's reflections on Native American civilization, religion, and morality (pages 55, 129, 131).

Other notable figures encountered or discussed by Robson include: Clinton B. Fisk (1828-1890) of the Freedmen's Bureau (page 6); John Parker Hale (1806-1873), U.S. minister to Spain (page 7); Joseph Gould (1808-1886), Canadian political figure (page 39); Anna Dickinson (1842-1932), orator, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate (page 157); William Forster (1784-1854), British Quaker abolitionist buried in Tennessee (pages 79, 112, 117, 140); George Dixon and Alfred Jones, superintendents of a Freedmen school in Danville, Virginia (pages 96, 98); Yardley Warner (1815-1885), Quaker who founded Warnersville, a free black community (pages 98, 113); and Daniel Drew, a former slave who attended the Southland Institute and became a Quaker minister in Arkansas (pages 119-121).

The loose correspondence consists of seven letters, six written from Isaac Robson to his wife Sarah Robson during his American tour, 1870-1871, with reflections on Reconstruction, Quaker meetings, prisons, and other topics. One letter from William Harvey to Joshua Wheeler Robson written from Leeds, England, in 1885 mentions financial charity for immigrant Mennonites.