{"id":1297,"date":"2019-01-11T11:07:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/?p=1297"},"modified":"2025-01-05T13:58:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-05T19:58:56","slug":"diary-1862-part-3-over-the-river-and-through-the-woods-and-up-to-the-quarry-and-over-to-earlville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/diary-1862-part-3-over-the-river-and-through-the-woods-and-up-to-the-quarry-and-over-to-earlville\/","title":{"rendered":"Diary 1862, part 3: Over the River and Through the Woods and Up to the Quarry and Over to Earlville"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

See part 1<\/a> and part 2<\/a> for background on Catharine Siglin’s 1862 diary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 1989 to 1994, I went to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. For the first year, I lived in Chicago, about fifteen minutes away from school via el train. After that, I lived in the western, and then the far western \u2019burbs. Whether by car or by commuter train, the trip was over an hour each way – a longer than average commute<\/a> for the area at the time, but not wildly out of line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Later, after we’d moved to Minnesota, I started reading Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski books<\/a>, which are set in Chicago. I enjoyed them for many reasons, but one thing that made them seem especially authentic – and gave me a perverse feeling of nostalgia for my time in the Chicago area – was the amount of time that V.I. spends in the car, getting from work to home to the various places she needs to go for her investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I think of the kinds of people who regularly have to spend a lot of time in transit, I think of people with cars or other motorized transportation. Or hunter gatherers who have to move around<\/a> to get their food. When I think of 19th century farmers, I imagine people who don’t get away from home very much. I remember how momentous it was for Almanzo to make the twenty-four-mile round trip to bring Laura home from school in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s These Happy Golden Years<\/em>. Or how Beret Hansa felt so isolated and trapped in her prairie farm home that she climbed into her big wooden chest with her baby and didn’t ever want to come back out, in Ole R\u00f8lvaag’s Giants in the Earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I was surprised to see so many references to travel in Great-Great Grandma Catharine Siglin’s diary, starting with the very first entry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

brout one load of
wood from malugins
in the after noon
went over to
Gobles avisiting <\/p>SATURDAY, JANUARY 4<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

went to the quarry
brout to lodes
went to Fetherlees
to the Dance had
aquarl [a quarrel] with Alf<\/p>THURSDAY, JANUARY 9<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

whent to pawpaw
had a good time<\/p>FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

whent to pawpaw
had toth drawn out<\/p>FRIDAY, APRIL 4<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How far was she traveling? To get a rough I idea, I sketched out just the trips she listed for the month of January. Hover over a trip to see that day’s diary entry and an estimate of the miles traveled. Hover over a destination to see additional information about the place. I’ve included the modern-day roads as points of reference. Be patient, it may take a little while to load.<\/p>\n\n\n\n