This letter, by former President John Quincy Adams,
is in response to a request by the Mechanical Library Association of Baltimore for
Adam’s to speak at their facility at some future date. This association was connected
to and an outgrowth of the Baltimore volunteer Mechanical Fire Company, formed
by the company for member’s self education. Adams is informing them that he will not
be able to speak at the Association’s venue on the date requested. For a full description see the collection page.
This letter was written in 1849 by a forty-niner in St. Louis, one William H. Morse, to a friend back home in New England. He’s been in St. Louis for three weeks, the last stop on the frontier, as he prepares to embark on a journey westward on the overland trail, making his way to California in search of gold. He describes his 35 day trip thus far, from an unnamed town in the northeast, south through Baltimore to Harpers Ferry, through the Cumberland Gap to Morgantown, where he caught steamboats that carried him to Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, down the Ohio River, and up the Mississippi to St. Louis. Morse provides a colorful commentary along the way, describing the towns and major landmarks he passed.