(TRAVEL) Michael G Dale An Ohio Mississippi riverboat travel

Sale 2646 - Lot 273

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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(TRAVEL.) Michael G. Dale. An Ohio-Mississippi riverboat traveler describes fashionable ladies dancing cotillions. 2 Autograph Letters Signed "M.G.D." to father and brother in Pennsylvania. 3, 2 manuscript pages plus integral address panel on final blank, one postmarked Greenville, IL and the other Pittsburgh; minor wear. St. Louis and Pittsburgh, 1839, 1845

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Michael Gundacker Dale (1814-1896) was an attorney and judge in Edwardsville, IL, where he was later acquainted with Abraham Lincoln. He wrote the first of these letters from St. Louis to his father, the noted surveyor and judge Samuel Futhey Dale of Lancaster, PA, 26 May 1839, describing a 9-day voyage from Pittsburgh to St. Louis on the steamboat Pennsylvania down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers: "A company of some 18 or 20 or more of the wealth, beauty & fashion of Pittsb'g on a pleasure trip to the Falls of St. Anthony formed the most valuable part of the cargo. A goodly portion of these were young ladies, the rest were brothers, lovers, attendants, fathers &c. . . . The ladies generally spent the day in reading & promenading, the evening in dancing cotillions &c. . . . This city of St. Louis does, indeed, grow apace. It is becoming a great city. . . . Heretofore the citizens have attended but little to comforts & luxuries, now though all is bustle, business & turning of pennies into pounds, yet convenience & appearance are regarded & princely buildings are being erected."

By the time of the second letter six years later, the romance of the steamboat had ended for Dale. Writing from Pittsburgh on 8 May 1845 to his brother, Samuel F. Dale of Franklin, PA, he complained: "I am tired already of travelling, so slow, so tedious. Until a railroad is constructed from St. Louis to Philad'a, I question if I will be again found between the 2 places. It should be but two & a half days travel."