After having posted the diary entries of Elizabeth House Trist on December 23 and 26 when she was traveling from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, on December 26 I came upon the article “Trove of Information From the 1930s, Animated by the Internet” in the The New York Times. It reported on the completion of a project by the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab to digitize one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. The twenty topics in the atlas include, for example: Boundaries 1607-1927, Indians 1507-1930, and Political Parties and Opinions 1788-1930. The digital edition reproduces all of the atlas’s nearly 700 plates but, in addition, many have been “georectified,” that is warped so that they can be placed on top of a digital map of the United States and moved from year to year to show changes during the time span under consideration. You can toggle back and forth between the two versions, plate and georectified; clickable sidebars provide underlying data and information about sources.

Naturally, the topics that appealed to me most were those that included information about the country during the Revolution and early nationhood: Public Post Roads and Stage Routes 1774, Plans of Cities 1775-1803, and Iron and Steel Works 1725-1775, to name a few.

To get back to Elizabeth House Trist, I was particularly interested in Rates of Travel from New York City in 1800 under the heading Industries and Transportation, 1620-1931. The atlas plate is on the left. Although she departed from Philadelphia in the year 1783, I thought this map would provide fairly accurate information for Trist’s trip.

In the digital image you can hover over a location for the time and distance to New York City. According to the map, the trip to Pittsburgh (276 miles) would have taken one week traveling at a speed of 1.6 mph. Of course this was unrealistic for Trist’s journey given the time of year and circumstances (see posts). She left Philadelphia on December 23 and arrived in Pittsburgh on January 9; her trip took two weeks and three days.

Elizabeth House Trist was traveling to join her husband in New Orleans. Her diary breaks off on July 1, 1784, just above Natchez, when she heard the news that her husband had died while she was wintering over in Pittsburgh. According to the digital map, the trip from New York City to New Orleans (1167 miles) would have taken four weeks in 1800, traveling at a speed of 1.8 mph. That estimate, of course, did not take into account low water on the Ohio and Mississippi, Indian unrest, what Trist called “a Passionate sort of climate,” and a host of other complications.

Do spend some time examining the maps in the amazing Richmond project.

Excerpts from Elizabeth House Trist’s diary can be read on pages 277-285 of In the Words of Women.

Elizabeth Trist and her traveling companions pushed on, contending with continued cold weather. Trist noted in her diary: “Snow up to the Horses bellies.” She complained of dirty lodgings—“I kept my cloaths on, to keep my self from the dirt off the bed cloaths.” She sorely felt the lack of privacy and was much gratified by efforts to provide it.

[On the 3rd of January, 1784] Stop’d at a little Hut Kept by one Ryan. The neatness of the place and the attention of the man made us as happy as if we had been in a palace. . . . We had a little particion run along the side of our bed, and we hung our great coats up at the foot, which made our birth very private. Mr. Fowler and Mr. Hamilton retired to the Kitchen for us to go to bed; and I made it a rule to get up before day light that I might not see anybody nor they [see] me dress. It is so customary for the Men and Women to sleep in the same room that some of the Women look upon a Woman as affected that makes any objection to it. One told me that I talk’d to upon the subject that she thought a Woman must be very incecure in her self that was afraid to sleep in the room with a strange man. For her part, she saw nothing indelicate in the matter, and no man wou’d take a liberty with a woman unless he saw a disposition in her to encourage him.

4th After Breakfast, we set out on our journey. . . .

Trist and her party made their way across the Allegheny Mountains. When “a great fall of rain” melted the snow, they were obliged to proceed on foot through mud “without sinking higher than our knees.” When it turned cold, “the whole earth appeared like Glass.”

In the Morng of the 8th. . . . Our Horses scarse able to keep their feet. . . . for the first time since I left home, my Spirits forsook me. I began to prepare my self for the other world, for I expected every moment when my neck wou’d be broke. I cou’d not help crying. Mr. Fowler kept before me and, it being dark, I did not expose my weakness. Some times I wish’d he wou’d ride on and leave me [so] that I might get down and die.

Reaching Pittsburgh on January 9th, Trist stayed with the Fowlers until May.

The diary entries can be found on pages 278-79 of In the Words of Women.

It was not until December of 1783, after peace had been declared, that Elizabeth House Trist summoned “resolution enough to undertake the Journey” from Philadelphia to join her husband Nicholas who had established himself on land he had purchased in Louisiana. She bade farewell to her mother, who had kept a well-regarded boarding house in Philadelphia during the Revolution, and arranged for the care of her 8-year-old son. Her plan was to travel with a woman named Polly and Alexander Fowler, her husband’s friend, through southern Pennsylvania and reach Pittsburgh, where she intended to spend the winter with the Fowlers. In the spring she would go by boat down the Ohio and continue southward on the Mississippi.

The first leg of her journey was far from easy, especially at that time of year. On December 23 her party arrived at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and put up at a tavern. Trist kept a diary; following are the entries for December 24th and 25th.

24th Arose very early with an intention to set off before Breakfast, but it set in to snow very fast which detained us till 10 O’ clock; we rode some distance before we baited [fed] our Horses, the roads beyond description bad: we cou’d get no further that day than Elizabeth Town, which is 18 miles from Lancaster. . . .

On the 25th left . . . before Breakfast. The weather’s moderated a little but very ruff roades. . . . We scarse go out of a walk, which makes our journey tedious. We arrived at Chambers’ ferry on the Susquehanna at 3 O Clock PM but found it impassable, such quantity of Ice running. None wou’d attempt to put us over. We were under necessity of staying at the ferry House all night. . . . Were obliged to Sleep in the same room with Mr. Fowler and another man. Not being accustom’d to such inconveniences, I slept but little.

On the 26th Mr. Chambers got several more hands and with great exertions put us over. The boat being full of Horses and the rapidity of the current, together with the Ice, made it very difficult to attain the other shore. My heart almost sunk within me.

In the next post: Trist continues her journey.

The diary excerpts can be found on pages 277-78 of In the Words of Women.

Hannah Fayerweather Winthrop was the wife of Harvard Professor John Winthrop. In a letter to her friend Mercy Otis Warren, dated January 1, 1774, she commented on the Boston Tea Party which occurred on December 16, 1773. I particularly like the last sentence.

Yonder, the destruction of the detestable weed, made so by cruel exaction, engages our attention. The virtuous and noble resolution of America’s sons, in defiance of threatened desolation and misery from arbitrary Despots, demands our highest regard. May they yet be endowed with all that firmness necessary to carry them through all their difficulties, till they come off conquerors. . . . We hope to see good accounts of the Tea cast away on the Cape. The Union of the Colonies, the firm and sedate resolution of the People, is an omen for good unto us. And be it known unto Britain, even American daughters are Politicians and Patriots, and will aid the good work with their female efforts.

Hannah’s letter was read at the conclusion of The Proceedings of a Special Meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society held in Boston on December 16, 1873, to celebrate the One Hundreth Anniversary of the Destruction of the Tea in Boston Harbor, pages 68-69.

December 16th is the 240th anniversary of the famed Boston Tea Party in which Massachusetts patriots, disguised as Indians, boarded three ships and threw their cargo—341 tea chests—into the harbor. The purveyor of the tea was the financially troubled East India Company.

In an attempt to save the company, in which many MPs had stock, Parliament granted it a monopoly, allowing it to sell tea directly to consignees in North America, instead of at auction in London to merchants there who sold it at higher prices in England and abroad. The company expected to benefit in two ways: it could clear its warehouses of old, overstocked Chinese tea (it was Chinese and not Indian) and at the same time, by eliminating the middlemen, increase its revenue.

The plan did not work. Parliament insisted on retaining the tax on tea—which had been part of the Townshend Acts (1767), and was reaffirmed by the Tea Act (1773)—and was determined to collect it. Although the tax had provoked a boycott in the colonies, Parliament expected that, lured by a lower price, paying the tax (only a three penny duty) would be less objectionable. They were wrong. Even though the colonists could buy tea at a lower price than they had been paying before (for smuggled Dutch tea) they were not swayed; they objected to paying the tax because, they said, they were not represented in Parliament.

Mercy Otis Warren, in her History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, described what happened. She was not an eyewitness of what came to be known as the Boston Tea Party, but she was very much aware of what was going on.

[Tea] was an article used by all ranks in America, a luxury of such universal consumption, that administration was led to believe, that a monopoly of the sales of tea, might be managed, as to become a productive source of revenue. . . .

The people throughout the continent, apprized of the design, and considering at that time, all teas a pernicious article of commerce, summoned meetings in all the capital towns, and unanimously resolved to resist . . . by every legal opposition, before they proceeded to any extremities. . . .

As by force of habit, this drug had become almost a necessary article of diet, the demand for teas in America was astonishingly great, and the agents in Boston, sure of finding purchasers, if once the weed was deposited in their stores, haughtily declined a resignation of office. . . . .

The storage or detention of a few cargoes of teas is not an object in itself to justify a detail of several pages, but as the subsequent severities towards the Massachusetts [the so-called Intolerable/Coercive Acts] were grounded on what the ministry termed their refractory behaviour on this occasion; and as those measures were followed by consequences of the highest magnitude both to Great Britain and the colonies, a particular narration of the transactions of the town of Boston is indispensable. There the sword of civil discord was first drawn, which was not re-sheathed until the emancipation of the thirteen colonies from the yoke of foreign domination. . . .
Within an hour [after a meeting of townspeople which authorities had ordered to be dispersed] . . . there appeared a great number of persons, clad like the aborigines of the wilderness, with tomahawks in their hands, and clubs on their shoulders, who without the least molestation marched through the streets with silent solemnity, and amidst innumerable spectators, proceeded to the wharves, boarded the ships, demanded the keys, and without much deliberation knocked open the chests, and emptied several thousand weight of the finest [it was really old and of poor quality] teas into the ocean. No opposition was made, though surrounded by king’s ships, all was silence and dismay.

This done, the procession returned through the town in the same order and solemnity as observed in the outset of their attempt. No other disorder took place, and it was observed the stillest night ensued that Boston had enjoyed for many months.

Mercy Otis Warren’s History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, from a facsimile copy of the first edition (Volume 1) of the work, which was published in Boston by Manning and Loring in 1805, edited and annotated by Lester H. Cohen, (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1994), pages 57- 61.