It is 4 weeks this evening since I arrived in
N.
London to make you a very short visit. I have spent the evening in
finishing a letter to
Mr.
Olmstead
detailing the various adventures of my journey in
three sheets closely written. That you will receive in due time—He will
send it first to
Washington or
New
London as may be most convenient. I have just sealed it
alt and altho it is past eleven—my
bed time I cannot deny myself the pleasure of just commencing a letter which I
must finish to morrow. 4 weeks will have elapsed to morrow-morning since
you I bade you farewell and 5 or 6 will
have elapsed previous to your recieving any thing from me—How many times
[shall] you have thought of me during that period? I am seated by the fire in a
chamber of the house which if our lives are spared and I am enabled to succeed
as a teacher of the Mathematics in this college—which you are one day to
occupy as your residence—I have finished
what I had to say respecting the various persons whom I saw and
conversed with and the various things which I did said and thought for a
fortnight previous to the first of February—I am now able to call home
all my thoughts and to occupy myself with you alone. And what my love do you
wish me to say to you? That I thought of you much and often during my long
journey and that a removal of some hundred miles has produced no diminution of
that affection which I have promised to feel and which I shall feel till my
heart becomes a clod of the valley? These things are certainly true but I trust
you have to much confidence in me and too thorough a knowledge of the state of
my heart to need repeated assurances of my love. The letter which I send by
this mail to
Mr.
Olmstead
contains a history of my movements down to the time of my
arrival at
Chapel
Hill. You have hinted to me once or twice that your curiosity is pretty
strong of course you will feel some little wish to know what kind of country it
is in which the
University is placed and what kind of people they
are with whom you are hereafter to associate. Of the people I do not yet know a
great deal. A fortnights residence
of t
in a place; spent mostly in studies about triangles and ratios will not enable
one to make any profound observations upon the inhabitants. You know from the
map where
Chapel
Hill is situated—near the center of
N.
Carolina, west and N. west of
Raleigh.
The country in the neighbourhood is not mountainous, nor when I tell you that
it is hilly must you imagine that it resembles some parts of
Connecticut which you have visited. There are no
precipices—no great rocks but all the swellings are gradual—The
Country is much covered with wood—oak and pine—In travelling you
are surprised at the length of wilderness which intervenes between the houses
of the inhabitants and when you have found a dwelling there is only a small
improvement around it. The truth is that the settlements are chiefly on the
banks of the rivers where the ground is fertile whilst the roads run along the
high grounds. Nor is the state nearly as thickly settled as
Connecticut. There whenever you ascend an eminence the
whole face of the country appears cut up like a chequer board into regular
fields—here cultivated land there a pasture and there a meadow—the
woodlands forming
Page 2
but a small part of the whole.
Here you are presented with a vast ocean of forest with here and there a little
island amid the waste.–
Chapel
Hill rises so as to overlook a pretty
extensive large extent of
country to the eastward but in other directions
it the
prospect is not very extensive. The ground descends however on all sides
into some vallies in which are streams discolored by the clay of the
soil.– Remember that the upper part of the paper is north here as in a
Map and I will endeavor to give you some idea of the plan. The road runs south
of west. None of the houses in this part of the country are as well built as
our houses in
Newengland—The chimneys are almost without an
exception out of doors—My house, however, is different. There is a grove
of oaks about the college extending quite to my house, this is of this
form—
2
There are now residing in the house Capt Hogg
3 an
old
Revolutionary officer and his wife and her niece—a
tolerably pretty little lady who is a great belle among the students. She has
had all the young damsels of the village to see her since I have been here and
they have chattered like so many magpies. At this very moment—1/4 past
eleven at night they have commenced a serenade to
Miss Sneed
4 for
that is her name. I am esteemed an odd sort of a philosophical genius here who
takes no more notice of the ladies than if they were so many statues. They dont
yet know the reason. There is indeed a Miss Henderson;
5 now
away; respecting whom there are some sly looks intimating that she will bring
me to my senses when she arrives.– I am sure they are pretty much out of
their reckoning. You will not find much society here (which is a new reason why
you should endeavor to be so well satisfied with that which you will find in
your own house as not to feel the want of any from abroad) but I will let you
know what you are to expect.–
Dr
Caldwell
is the son of a physician in
New
Jersey. He passed with reputation thro'
Princeton College of which he was a member during
the Presidency of
Dr
Witherspoon
. He was afterwards a tutor there with
Bishop
Hobart
and came here when he was 22. He is now 45. He is about the size
of
Mr
Olmsted
—is as I shall be some 8 or 10 years hence—that is
perfectly bald—He has an eye like an eagles and is a pleasant and
agreeable man He was once married some years ago but lost his
wife
and child. He has with[in] 7 or 8 years married
Mrs Hooper
a widow lady and one of the pleasantest ladies
that I have ever seen.
Mrs Hooper
had 3 sons
and one of whom is the professor of languages also a pleasant
man. He had the misfortune
while young
in his youth to kill his sister whilst playing
with a gun and this event has given a colouring to his character.
6 I am
told that he is subjects to seasons of melancholy and depression. He is a year
older than I am—Is married to a very pretty woman [
Frances Pollock Jones] and has one son [
William Wilberforce Hooper
], a fine bold boy, a year and
an half old—These two families are the only ones which are strictly
Page 3
speaking connected with the
University.
Mr
Clopton
is the instructor in the preparatory school—A
young man who has been once married and divorced—I find it difficult to
learn any particulars of his history He is a kind of Jack at all Trades—A
Baptist
in religion—a preacher a Doctor and an Instructor—He is a very
clever sort of a man but I do not think you will be much pleased with him.
There is a Major
Henderson
formerly the steward of college (but
the office is now abolished and the students board in the families in town) who
is a very worthy old gentleman of 63. He is much respected and has been the
representative in the assembly for the
County of
Orange for a number of years. His children are mostly married and
settled away. You can hardly imagine how much he and his wife love each other.
He takes boarders like most of the other families in the village.
7 The
rest of the people here are very worthy and clever without—much of the
bon ton
8 nor
are they much given to books. There are some 8 or ten young ladies but I have
not seen many of them nor do I remember the names of those whom I have seen.
There are 4 stores but they are very small and contain but few goods—This
you will believe when I tell you when I came to furnish my room it was
impossible to obtain either andirons or shovel and tongs. The former I borrowed
from the library room in college and I am still destitute of the latter and
pick up the brands with my fingers. I could procure only walnut chairs with
[unrecovered] splint bottoms and the largest looking glass for
sale in the village was not more than a quarter as large as the page on which I
am writing. The houses are not well furnished. I presume there are not more
than 3 or 4 carpets in the place. At the place where I board we have cof[fee
whea]t biscuit and bacon either cold or warm—at noon bacon, fowls corn
bread and hominy– also cab[bage]—The
Irish potatoe
will not grow well here—for supper we have wheat biscuit and coffee. The
labour is done almost exclusively by servants—The business of the ladies
of course is to scold.– The young men in the college are studious and far
more regular than I expected to find them. I am pleased at present with the
situation—How long I shall continue here
God only knows. I
enclose my profile taken in
Peale's-Museum in
Philadelphia. I do not believe it very much resembles me
but it may chance sometimes to call me to remembrance when I should otherwise
be forgotten. I intended to have sent this last week but I learnt in the course
of Friday evening last that altho the mails did not go out till
Saturday.-morning it had already closed at 4 oclock in the afternoon. Shall I
say that I am glad if the disappointment of your expectations of hearing from
me last week has made you anxious—No I am not glad of your anxiety itself
but I am glad if you feel such a desire of hearing from me as will make you
anxious when disappointed—and in that view—as a proof of your love
even your anxiety would be agreable. Is
Mr.
Taber in
Waterford. Be now my
M. a good and jewtiful girl and not def to the request
which I make that the very first moment you are at leisure you will write me
all the news—For that is the way that they talk here
M.–