| Title: | Thomas Warnock, New Orleans to John M. Orr, Chicago. |
|---|---|
| ID | 3183 |
| Collection | Irish Emigration Database |
| File | Warnock, Thomas/49 |
| Year | 1848 |
| Sender | Warnock, Thomas |
| Sender Gender | male |
| Sender Occupation | businessman |
| Sender Religion | unknown |
| Origin | New Orleans, Louisiana, USA |
| Destination | Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Recipient | Orr, John M. |
| Recipient Gender | male |
| Relationship | friends |
| Source | Copyright Retained by John McCleery, 80 Circular Rd, Belfast BT4 2GD. |
| Archive | Ulster American Folk Park. |
| Doc. No. | 9702136 |
| Date | 31/03/1848 |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | EMG |
| Log | Document added by LT, 10:02:97. |
| Word Count | 2655 |
| Genre | |
| Note | |
| Transcript | New Orleans 31st March 1848 My Dear John, I received your letter of the 9th February on the 28th informing me of your intended journey or adventure. I admit your spirit of enterprise & would like well to have shared the pleasures & fatigues of your trip. I got your paper the other day which you sent from Kalamazoo dated 3rd of March which I took for the day of your arrival there & in referring to the map I think you had not lost much time in going that distance. It seems by the paper and it's advertisements to be quite a civilized place & to contain a good many opponents in trade who in their advertisements show a good deal of wit. I think you must have experienced a good deal of cold weather as some of the Northern papers talked about the mercury being below zero. How did you get on with the Indians and did you meet many. Had you a guide or companion of any kind. Had you to bivouach [bivouac?] or is the country so thickly inhabited that you could always meet with a nights lodging. I hope you will be safe returned by the time this reaches Chicago & have some of the Indian names your Father used to give us in his descriptions of the missionaries. If you have time and inclination, give your opinion how I could stand a Northern winter, now that you yourself have experienced one; is it as I have heard it described, that although the cold is so intense, yet from the stillness of the air it does not affect so much as the cold weather at home: this is what I have heard said of Canada. Have you had any scating [skating?] or sleighing, from the animated accounts I have heard of the sleighing excursions, I think it would almost reconcile one to the cold. How can the people get on with their out-door work, is it stopped altogether. Let me have a description of all the customs and ways of the folk during the frost. There has not been what I would call cold weather since I came here, in January there was a frost every night for a fortnight but then the sun during the day shone out and gave as much heat as we have at home in June. Indeed the whole Winter was something like our Summer, in the evening the air had the soft balmy feel of a September or August evening. I came to New Orleans with strong prejudice against it but that fled before I was a month here. You know the bad character it has at home but I must say I was never in so quiet a city in my life & feel just as safe as if I was in Portaferry. I live out in the outskirts of the city near the woods & come home sometimes late & very often never meet a soul. I have not seen a row since I have been here & there is far less crime committed in it than in Cincinnati. The worst thing that I see in it is slavery, and that I abhor and hate. Willy McCleery left this on the 2nd of March, he was two months here & I saw him two or three times a week & we always spent Sunday together. He looks quite well & is grown a great big fellow. He and his Captain get on very agreeably together, more like two brothers than anything else. Willy thought a great deal of him. They have gone to Trieste with a cargo of cotton & he told me when I wrote to you to remember him to you. I had a letter from home last mail & the other day got one from Rachel & E A McCleery. Our folk were just as we left them and your family were all well except your William Henry who has had a very bad Typhus Fever, but has now recovered. Eliza Anne says she never saw such an anxious & affectionate creature than your Jane Ellen during his illness. She says Jane Ellen is a good deal thinner but looks very well & is cheerful as usual. Eliza Anne gives me a good deal of news of what is going on. She & our girls say Portaferry is miserably dull. They have, that is the Sunday School teachers, got up a Quilting match & have commenced two quilts which she describes as very fine, which are said to be sold & the proceeds to be applied to the funds for building the Schoolhouse. Mr Nugent is planking the Rock. I think my Father will patronise it as much as anyone. Mr Scott has made a great many improvements about the Church. Dr Filson has had Typhus fever but is now better; what do you think: the old surgeon was attending him. Dr Tom sometimes takes a spree now and again. There has been a good deal of influenza. Old Jack Donnan is dead. Mrs Thomas Gelson is married again to a Blacksmith from Dunsford: a few days after they were married she sent him home to his Mother. Another of the Miss Lawsons is married to one of the Wilsons of Tullanacrew; old Davy is working wisely - he is getting them off his hands. Andy McDonnel's were put up to Auction; James H. bought what he had in Marlfield; but Andy bought in Ballywhite, he is still drinking hard. Lord Bangor is of age and they had a great ado's in Strangford. E Anne says her Brother has thrown off the Frock and now looks quite sparce; he is as droll as ever and has become quite a lady's man. She says he is very lonely, no one to go with, but he keeps his spirits well. Many a time, Willy and I wished you & he had been with us when we were sauntering along New Orleans streets; I think we would have cut a swell that would have astonished the natives. Her Mama still complains of Rheumatism & toothache. Her Father just the old cut and so is Maria. God bless her every morning she rises, is as cheerful, good humoured & beautiful as ever; E A only says she is well but I put the corollary to it. Many & I may say every day I wish for the enjoyment of but half an hour with her & your Jane Ellen. To me they seemed the Personification of Female perfection. Often & fondly do I think of the many truly happy evenings I spent in their company; & I hope that God may grant that you and I may yet have that enjoyment again. To be in the society of two such beings would tend to make me a better man than all the Bibles ever printed, or all the sermons ever preached. To live in their atmosphere would have the effect of subduing all unworthy passions in my nature, to please them would be to me, my greatest desire; to displease them, my greatest unhappiness. I thus write to you my dear John, in the same strain that many of our conversations partook of when walking at home. What would you give for a walk along the Walter shore, or through the Demesne, or over the Derryhill. John I cannot get home & Portaferry out of my head; all that I hold dear on this earth belong to it. I dream of it nearly every night; last week I thought you had set up a shop in Portaferry & I was selling you a lot of leather but somehow or other I could not tell you the price of a single article. James has bought a pony and rides out to the farms; he has to wear spectacles at night when reading and the girls have great laughing at him; they say that he is always under the impression that I will go home. It is reported that the [W Cammon?] is failed or asking for time. Mr Johnson is in the Keg of bran again. Young Hugh gets on as usual. Markets are very low in Ireland but low as they are, the poor can but buy with difficulty. They talk about potatoes as a curiosity & wonder if I ever get any. James has had a great crop of turnips & has been feeding a great many cows. What do you think is going to become of our poor country; will it always be going back & still in difficulties. I heard H.C. Bowden has got settled for 3/6 in the œ, with all his boasting he has bought himself to a pretty pass. James Guisson is here & a son of Mr Cramsies came out in the same vessel & had been in the hospital here, ill with ship fever & has now gone to St. Louis; he is rather a wild one. Business is awfully dull here; the news from England of the constant and gradual decline in prices there has had a parallel effect here. I have not been able to do anything for myself yet, as everything has gradually drooped since I came here; so that if I had bought anything I was sure on losing and it would be well if half the people had not been in business, as they have not made their expenses. A great many speculated in the beginning of the season, always expecting that each succeeding mail from England would bring word of an improvement in prices but in that they have been grievously disappointed. Some things, viz Corn, Cotton, Provisions have fallen since I came from 30 to 50 per cent. Failures have commenced, & the Banks have refused to discount paper; except of the most undoubted kind. There have been immence quantities of produce come down the river but fully 2/3rds have been shipped on the packers account to the Boston & New York rather than accept the ruinously low prices they would get here and therefore only 1/3rd has been left for speculators and regular traders; this you will perceive has shortened business very much some days it is as dull, I have heard some of the residents say, as in the summertime when the epidemic is raging. You will see the drays hauled up along both sides of the street anxiously waiting to get something to do. I lost $99.66 on my speculation of whiskey and oil, this was a bad beginning but a bad beginning sometimes has a good end, at least so I hope. I deal largely in hope and although such a commodity does not always return a good profit, yet I will hope on to the end of the chapter. I seem to have been following the bad times, but this I could not forsee. Living here is very expensive; I cannot live here (& I do it as economically as possible) under $40 dollars per month. This with the loss I met & travelling here has made cosiderable inroad on my small capital, so I have determined to try some of the Northern cities where if I can make but little, I can live on little & if you think that I can stand the cold of Chicago, I will go there when I leave this and start something in a small way. I should like very much to be in the same town that you are living in. It is very lonely to be in a place where everyone is comparatively strangers. I have said nothing of my determination to go North in any of my letters home, as there is no use in saying anything about particulars. Even if I could do a successful business, I would not like to live in New Orleans, for by living here for a number of years, unfits a person to live in a Northern climate. The Winter season is delightful but in the Summer people are stewed alive, the air is so damp and heavy. Those who I see live here constant lose their hair & teeth and have a most curious look, some of them get fat & flabby and others very soon look old. For a person who has plenty of money there is no place he can spend the Winter more pleasantly than here, there being lots of amusement of every kind. About a month ago I got a situation in a large Western produce House as the only way to preserve my capital & I will take off as much this way as will pay my expenses. For the first three weeks I had very much to do, working from 8 in the morning to 9 & 10 o'clock at night. Nearly all the goods sent them were shipped to New York. When you write direct your letter to Robert Park & Co, 5, Lafayette Street as Mr Park & I live in the same house. We pay for the rooms and the cooking of our meals & buy the necessaries ourselves, in this way we have our meat cheaper & more comfortable than in the Boarding Houses. Mr Park's nephew came out from Ireland in February & is living with us. James Fetherston is doing very little and I think never has done much. There have been some Belfast vessels here for more than four months & some of them two months waiting for freights. There is an immense fleet of vessels here now and has been all Winter. Henry Maxwell was here for about six weeks and sailed last week. I dined with him on board one day & I was telling him I thought I would see you before long and he wished to be remembered to you; he was saying as much as that he was going to get married but he would not tell me to whom. I find that this paper is so thin, I have to change my handwriting. Captain Mearns was expected here but he has not arrived yet. There has been a young lady & her brother amusing us for several Sundays with Baloon [Balloon?] ascensions & there is now an opposition one. Last Sunday, it was to go up but it burst when they were inflating it. Sunday is the great day for exhibitions. I am sorry to say that I have to take the pills as usual; I was in great hopes that by a few months in this climate that I would have got clear of them but it has not been of any use and I must only live in hope. Archy has bought a cottage in Newport, a small town opposite Cincinnati across on the Kentucky side & is living there with his wife who still continues in very bad health. If business gets so dull that I should lose my situation, which I think will be the case, I will start immediately for Chicago. You might send me a Chicago newspaper, I would like to see how the town supports the Press. Do you think that I would have the chance of a privateship in your Company. Do you wear Mustachios if you do I will begin to cultivate one in anticipation. I would like very much to have seen you the day of your parade; I don't think I would like to fight, a little show however would do no harm. I will tell you all my journeys when I see you; and now my Dear John goodbye and I remain your friend Thos [Thomas?] Warnock You must not say anything about my going from this when you are writing home I will tell them in my next letter. I am now writing in my bedroom & it is so hot that I am perspiring how do you feel |
