April 19, 2023
“I suppose you think I have forgotten you as it is now 9 months since I left you, but this is a large country to ramble thro.” So begins the first letter home from Charles Watts, who left London for the United States in December of 1835, at age 23. After a seven-week crossing and a New York City winter, Watts’s rambling took him up to Buffalo, into Canada, and at last into Ohio and then Michigan. In the letter, the first of 22 surviving dispatches sent from and to Watts between 1836 and 1868, Watts describes “The Falls of Niagara”—”the water was greatly agitated and the foam flew over me like Thick Rain”—and assures his brother Edward that there’s land to be had in the New World.
A remarkable immersion in history as it was lived, Searching for Charles offers transcriptions of Charles’ letters back home as he and countless other immigrants built new lives—and a nation. Author Stephen Watts, a descendant, writes touchingly of his and his father’s fascination in the letters and the project of family history, though these rich and fascinating letters are of wider interest. The fruits of that research extend beyond the letters themselves, as author Watts offers illuminating context covering family, local, national, and international news. The letters cover Charles’s opinions on hangings in England (“This remnant of feudalism must soon give way to the face of Public Opinion”) and famine in Ireland, as well as local concerns like the developments of canals, the rising costs during the buildup to the Civil War, and much more.
Charles is a dedicated letter writer, one who vows that he “will take time to fill the sheet if it takes me a month,” and his missives capture the textures of life. Backmatter includes a detailed account of the process of research, plus a thorough index and family tree.
Takeaway: Rich, lively letters of American life from a 19th century immigrant from London.
Comparable Titles: David A. Gerber’s Authors of Their Lives, J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A