Voice of the People: Daily Life in Antebellum Rural Delaware County New York and Environs

Transportation/Travel

Transportation/Travel Home page | 1823 travel journal of Laura Sherwood: Table of Contents

Note: For serious researchers: may be hard to read, as is the original
Background: Laura Sherwood, husband Samuel, and two of her children, Ann Eliza and Samuel Augustus left their home in Delhi, NY in September 1823 for a lengthy tour of upstate New York. Although the method of transportation for the majority of the trip is not clear, at least one entry indicates they rode on horseback. The journal describes people, scenery, accommodations, villages, and the opening of a canal aqueduct in Rochester. The journal abruptly ends before they return home.

Excerpt from page 36:

"...After riding a mile with tired horses and a one handed driver, discovered our baggage  was off, on looking observed it a short distance back. Scrabbled it up and went on. On reaching the usual place of going on board, found the boat had gone five minutes before the driver said he could overtake her at the mouth of the river just before the boat arrived and went on board partook of a miserable kind of supper and tea after fasting all day...

Oct 7  The wind soon increased...

Original journal courtesy of the Delaware County Historical Association Archives, 46549 State Hwy 10, Delhi, NY, 13753. Further information on the Sherwood Family is available in the Letters and Journals of Samuel and Laura Sherwood (1813 - 1823), edited by John Crocker, Delhi, NY, 1967,  available in the Delaware County Historical Association Archives and Milne Library, State University of New York College at Oneonta.

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