Category: Voices of the past

  • Journal of the Travels of Christian Forrer III (1822), part 2

    This section contains one of my favorite stories from Christian’s journal, in which he meets the famous governor of New York, DeWitt Clinton. The governor must have been a wonderfully good-natured man, to be so polite to a bumptious young traveler who was wasting his time. But first, while the steamboat is being repaired, the…

  • Journal of the Travels of Christian Forrer III (1822), part 1

    When I was a kid, I always stayed a week or two at my grandparents’ farm in the summer. My grandmother, as faithfully as she went to church every Sunday, faithfully went to a sale or two every Saturday. By “sale,” which is what she called it, I mean an estate auction. At one, she picked…