ABSTRACT
The William Candler Family letters offer insights and observations found nowhere else. They are written from friends and relatives in America and London to William Candler, an English immigrant who arrived in the Detroit area about 1845. Details about the theatre and a drunken party lead the writer to urge his reader ‘Do not show this to anybody’. Advice for more immigrants making their preparations is given. An 1853 letter from London gives good insight about the to and fro of information, and records dire situations in London, even though we associate these years with economic prosperity – a good reminder of how there are always exceptions to the general rule. Keeping some of the family back in England was the fact that their father ‘will never leave’. The Great Exhibition is referred to, as is the fact that the writer was fired for causing trouble, admitting that ‘I loafed one day’ – another reminder that not all British workers and prospective immigrants were hard-working. The letter of 4 December 1853, written from Baltimore to Detroit by John W. Butler (apparently another English immigrant), includes British observations of Washington, where Butler saw both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. A later letter of 1861 records aspects of the Civil War and is included in Volume 4.
