Below is a portion of a letter from William Harrison Whipple, aged 21, to his parents back in Massachusetts, Jacob and Susan Whipple, written in 1838. It is one of the earliest first-hand accounts of Sterling, written less than four years after Hezekiah Brink became the first settler here.
Even the envelope is interesting. The envelope shows the letter was mailed from Gap Grove on Feb. 17 for 25 cents, the equivalent of $6.89 today. This was before the use of postage stamps so the amount due, paid by the recipient, is written where we would place a stamp. The cost was based on the number of pages so people frequently wrote in the margins to save paper, as was done in this letter. According to a note on the back it arrived in Barre, MA on what looks like Mar. 15. Mail has gotten much faster and cheaper! The smudge on the back of the envelope was sealing wax as commonly used then.
Part of one page is torn and missing. There he talks of expected improvement in the river, i.e. building a thousand foot dam. It would actually be seventeen more years before a dam is built across the Rock River. Whipple continues on tell his parents the possible routes to travel from Massachusetts to Sterling. He then tells them what to bring that is not available in the new settlement. He also tells them what to sell as some things are not worth the cost of shipping as they are available in the frontier town.
Below is the text from pages two and three.
Jan 30 1838
Dear Parents
…Corn is selling for sixty two cents a bushel Spring wheat for about a dollar and a quarter potatoes 37 c white beans 2.00 hams will be worth a bout ten cents a pound on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, it being about twenty eight miles to the Miss and forty eight to Ill flour is worth by the barrel $10. & $12 here Sugars are but little higher here than at the east molasses comes higer as they retail it in small quantities, green teas come about the same as at the east but have no black here. As for the health of this place it far exceeds Mass. I have known no fever ague here not one case that originated here, and as for consumption no one has it here except they bring it with them there has been no deaths since I have been here, this winter so far has been more like spring than winter but very little snow some quite cold days the river has not frozen over yet. We have a good many eastern people, a few Kentuckies from Indiana and Ohio and one man has bought a claim adjoining ours which he paid $1,100 down but the was improvements on the same he is from Pennsylvania he has gone for his family he appears like a fine man, we have a lawyer from the same place of him here, as to the producking of soil I suppose that you have no doubt but what it will produce a great deal more with less labour than the land at the east. And as for society you know that can not be of the best kind knowing the country to be so new and composed of all sorts of people but is quite good considering all these things.
You had better fetch dairy tools for making Cheese and Butter also ..?.. skins for such You cannot get here. And as for crockery which You can not sell there at any advantage which if were out hear would be as good as new for they charge a good round profit. I only say that you had better fetch these things be caus I suppose that You have them on hand and will have to sell them, and if you think that You shall want them out here I think will come much cheeper to fetch out. Claims vary in price according to their location and the improvement that is on them and the quantity of timber good timber land is worth, at least they ask from ten to twelve dollars an acre for the claim but timber of not so good a quality of at a less price. If You can clude to come by water I think by the way of the lakes would be cheapest but You can come in so good a season, the first boat that came to Chicago last spring was in June when I came to Buffalo I had to wait a while for the ice to get out of the harbor to get conveyance, the papers in Buffalo often publish that the harbor is clear from ice when in fact it is full, that was the case when I was there. Cheese and Butter fetch a good price butter is worth 37 ½ c and none at that cheese at 25 c and none at that. This river will be a better river than the Illinois river to navigate on a count that there is few if any ..?.. bars and as soon as the improvement is finished there will be more trade on this river than on the Illinois on the account of the lead mines a bout sixty or eighty above here which will be worked soon as the river is improved most likely some boats will trade in lead this season.
