Apr 07, 2022 - Sale 2600

Sale 2600 - Lot 236

Price Realized: $ 4,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(TRAVEL.) Diary of a trip through western Virginia by horse, and then to Niagara Falls by foot. [64, 76] manuscript pages. 12mo, original stiff calf wrappers, minor wear, titled in manuscript "Virginia 1842, Niagara 1843"; minimal wear to contents. Various places, 1842-1843
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This volume is an entertaining recounting of two unusual trips by a young Baltimore man. In the summer of 1842, he undertakes a journey by horseback to see Virginia's leading tourist attractions, including Mount Vernon. The next year he attempts to walk from Baltimore to Niagara Falls with two friends, although they complete the journey by boat and rail. This young adventurer's identity has not yet been puzzled out. As the entries are in a tidy and consistent hand with few corrections, we suspect it was a clean copy written out shortly after his arrival home.

The first trip extends from 8 August to 6 September. His itinerary includes the home of Charles Carroll in Carrollton, MD; Harpers Ferry, WV; and then into Virginia: Staunton, Natural Bridge, Warm Springs, his furthest southwest point at Cloverdale near Roanoke, Charlottesville, and back home through Washington. On 20 August he visits Weyer's Cave (now Grand Caverns), the nation's oldest show cave, opened to tourists in 1806, and here described at length. His guide shares "a host of tales & stories of witches & fairies & robbers." He also hits the trifecta of Founding Father homesteads, none of them yet properly set up for tourists. Monticello was "now in the possession of Capt. Levy of the Navy who has just been court-martialed. He is said to be very rude to strangers. He was not at home. A servant showed me in." Jefferson's gravestone had been removed to the house to protect it from vandals. At James Madison's late home Montpelier, "J Payne Todd resides here at present, Mrs. Madison his mother being in Washington. He is very polished & polite, invited me to dinner which I accepted. He is here all alone in his glory, having no more ribs than the number he was born with." John Payne Todd, President Madison's stepson, was a wastrel bachelor whose debts forced the sale of Montpelier just two years later, in 1844.

Most notably, our diarist describes his visit to Mount Vernon at length: "The gate was opened by an old woman, one of Washington's servants, who said she remembered him perfectly well. After arriving at the house, I went to the tomb. It has recently been built & the body of the general is in a sarcophagus & that of his wife in another. The whole affair is very neat but might have been much better. I then went to the old vault which has gone to ruin. The doors are broken down & the stones at the opening have fallen away. . . . The house stands on an eminence. It is two stories high & has a piazza reaching to the top in front. At back are the two gardens, one for vegetables and the other for flowers. The latter I walked through. It was kept by an old negro who, if you manage right, is as clever as the day is long. The negro houses are better here than any I have seen in Virginia."

The second journey has less star power, but is more unusual. Our adventurer sets out on 17 July 1843 on a "pedestrian tour": a backpacking expedition with a friend named Herman Wigman, about 120 years before fashion and modern hiking gear made such excursions more popular. Their goal was to walk from Baltimore to Niagara Falls, which today would be a good long day's drive, but in 1843 with no horses and no modern roads was quite an undertaking. In the first entry, he notes that "our knapsacks although containing only the necessarys of the journy we found ere we had proceded many yards very heavy & wearying to our backs." They nonetheless crossed into Pennsylvania the second day, and soon joined a third friend on leave from the Navy. They were often able to load their sacks onto canal boats and follow along on the towpaths. They met many inspiring or eccentric local characters on the route, including a canal boat operator who was in competition with former circus performers, and near Danville, PA they went to the top of a cliff where "a man of eccentric habits has built some houses, one leaning over the cliff of 400 feet in height. Here he is said to keep his library." In Wilkes Barre he describes at length an author calling himself the "Lunatic Bard of Wyoming" (Anthony Brower) who gave them an autographed book and invited them for dinner: "His room was adorned with ends & scraps picked up everywhere, papers, pictures, feathers, calico &c, hung all around the wall." They are delayed by bad weather and illness near the New York border, and then go the rest of the way to Niagara by rail and canal boat. He describes many of the sights near the falls (already a well-developed tourist site), including the Tuscarora reservation: "These Indians for the most part live in huts miserably constructed of logs. . . . The squaws dress in a peculiar manner. They have a mantle which nearly covers the head & is masst about the body & then hangs down behind in a peak nearly reaching the ground."

The three young men split up on the way home from Niagara, with our diarist venturing on to Newport, RI to meet his vacationing father. On a steamboat he saw "a soldier company returning home from an encampment at Newport. They were the remnants of the patriots of Dorr's Rebellion. T'wod have been fun to see them make a charge on a regular set of soldiers." He arrived back in Baltimore on 6 September. Additional notes on this thoroughly entertaining journal are available upon request.