Sixty Years of Letters
Sixty-six years of letters. Crops and courtships, tornadoes and war, cheese-making and grief. An extraordinary window into one family’s daily life, in their own words.
In 1775, nineteen-year-old Barak Smith marched from a Dover field toward Lexington and Concord, where American colonists had just fired the first shots of the Revolution.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
For two centuries, American families named their children out of the Bible, and everyone caught the references. Two names stand out that run through this family: Barak and Deborah.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
In 1778, Caleb Smith moved his family from Massachusetts to Danby, Vermont, a town full of Quakers. Within a generation, the Smiths were Quakers too.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Wing Rogers arrived in Danby in 1770, helped found the local Quaker meeting, and was eccentric enough that stories about him outlived him by generations.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Collins, New York was formed on Seneca land, still home to part of the Cattaraugus Reservation. Quakers built an antislavery community here, home to the Smith family for decades.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
A Pierson family mystery: three whalebone canes, carved for three brothers. We know where one is today. A letter hints at a second. The third has never been found.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Deborah Chickering Smith Pierson was widowed in the Civil War and raised four children alone, always moving west, until she settled near them all in California.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
William R. Pierson was a founding trustee of the Gowanda Presbyterian church, memorialized today in a stained glass window. He was also the father of George Pierson, who died in the Civil War.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Sixty-six years of letters. Crops and courtships, tornadoes and war, cheese-making and grief. An extraordinary window into one family's daily life, in their own words.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
In 1853, fifteen-year-old Mary Strang began a diary. She wrote of sleigh rides and evenings hearing Uncle Tom's Cabin read aloud. Then it breaks off, and the rest is lost.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Barak and Mary Smith ran an Underground Railroad station from their farm in Collins. In 1851, a federal marshal came searching the house, and Mary came up with a clever plan to turn him away empty-handed.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Orthodox Quaker Barak hid Mary's shoes to keep her from the Hicksite meeting. She went in her stocking feet. They disagreed about which meetinghouse, and agreed about almost everything else.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Barak and Mary Smith arrived in Collins, New York in 1826, and found much of Danby already there. Their community hadn't disappeared. Many had just moved.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
From a 17th-century Quaker meeting house on Cape Cod to a burial ground in the Green Mountains, there are physical traces of this family's story that you can still visit.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Susan B. Anthony and this family were cousins several times over, and part of the same Quaker world. Both families left New England for western New York in 1826.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Mary Palmer and Barak Smith grew up in the same small Quaker meeting in Danby, worshipping in the same room week after week. They married in 1808.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Gilbert Palmer helped found the Danby Friends meeting, fathered seventeen children, and donated the land for the burial ground where he became the first person laid to rest.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
Wing Rogers arrived in Danby in 1770, helped found the local Quaker meeting, and was eccentric enough that stories about him outlived him by generations.
Themes: Moving West | Building Communities
Time Period: 1826–1839
Location: Collins, New York
