ABSTRACT
The James Douglas letters are a significant collection written to Selkirk, Scotland, from Mount Morris, New York, and from Wisconsin after the Douglas family proceeded there. The Scottish brogue and dialect come through clearly in the spelling. Details on working on local canals and farms to acquire capital for their future move west are invaluable. Warnings to those who would join them are also interesting, especially those about the voyage and the vagabonds in Liverpool and especially New York, who ‘will pick the verry eyes out of your head’. The details on canal work are important: the Douglas family preferred that to farm work, in part because they could work on the canal all winter, for 12 hours a day, but not as hard as they worked in Scotland. Their references to religion are also important. They record four places and denominations for worship: Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist and Baptist – all of which were denominations that came from Britain. The Douglas family did not come to an alien land. However, ‘the ministers is no great hands they hire them by the year here and if they are not please with them they turn them off at the years end’. Like other British immigrants, they found the quality of preaching lacking, though the basic religious culture was familiar.
