[Letter of a Nebraska City Mormon settler, businessman and city official on the mid-Western scene.]

Wyoming, Nebraska Territory, 25 Nov. 1857. 8vo (31 x 19.5 cm), white paper. 6 pp. of manuscript.

A substantive letter by a notable early settler of Nebraska City who was engaged in business, the Mormon church, and public service in this frontier town. This letter contains substantive content relating to Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska Territory, as well as slavery, Native Americans, “Missouri Border Ruffians,” the Kansas-Nebraska Act, illegal voting, elections, farming, and more.

A prominent figure in the early development of Nebraska City, Jacob W. Waldsmith (b. 1835) made his capital as a prominent grocer and devoted much of his time to the Mormon church and community, as well as to municipal life. Born in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, Waldsmith ventured to Nebraska in its Territorial days with a mere $20 in his pocket, ultimately becoming a self-made man. The present letter—addressed to his father back in Pennsylvania—was composed after Waldsmith left Carroll County, Indiana in Sept. 1857 to venture to Nebraska City—having hitherto lived in Indiana since 1851. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened Nebraska Territory to settlement, and a year later Nebraska City was incorporated. Waldsmith makes reference to present “slavery agitation” in Nebraska City “which has been raging in this part of the country that I now live for the past two years.” Indeed, by overturning the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act enabled the legislature of Nebraska and Kansas Territories to determine for themselves whether to permit or forbid slavery. The issue of slavery thus became a recurring matter of debate in these territorial legislatures from 1855 onward. Leading up to the Civil War the majority of slaves in Nebraska were held in Nebraska City.

Waldsmith begins his letter by noting that he is currently enjoying “noble health” and that he last saw his brothers James and Joseph and their families on 25 Sept. of the present year. He explains that he has recently taken “a small western tour this fall”—“a trip of something over one thousand miles, from Ind[iana], to the Territorys of Kansas and Nebraska. I have traveled through the states of Illinois, Missouri & Iowa.” He remarks that “Illinois is most a splendid country” and then proceeds to offer an in-depth account of the mid-Western scene—touching on his travels through Missouri, St. Louis, Kansas, Jefferson City, Wyoming City, and Nebraska City—and addressing many subjects in between. The latter include farming and vegetation; crops and soil; the price of commodities; life in Nebraska Territory; politics; the presence of “the red men of the forest”; elections; illegal voting; the state of law and order in the mid-West, and more.

He closes this letter by wishing his father good health, who is evidently getting on in years. “Father I would like to see and converse with you once more here upon earth.” Waldsmith seems to have owed his father a sum of money, as he notes that if he gets to see him again he hopes “to square accounts” with him and “friend Jacob Lemon”—“and pay you interest from date.” Waldsmith’s father, John Waldsmith, was himself an early settler in Juniata County, Pennsylvania.

Waldsmith is profiled in Portrait and Biographical Album of Otoe and Cass Counties, Nebraska (1889), which touches on his Mormon activity. In 1851, he moved to Carroll County, Indiana, where he obtained employment on a farm for $12 a month and worked there until Sept. 1857, when he departed for Nebraska City. Arriving there on 16 Oct., he took a claim four miles northwest of the city on the river where he built a small shanty and lived with one James R. Kendall. In 1858, he worked on the levee in Wyoming Precinct; cut timber; built a log cabin on his property; and in 1860 married one Elizabeth Faunce, with whom he had six children—only two of which survived. After farming on his land, he sold his property and moved to Cass County, Nebraska where he bought a tract of wild prairie and timber land, upon which he planted and built a house. In 1869, he began renting his farm and moved to Nebraska City to engage in teaming; and in 1872, he traded his Cass County farm for Nebraska City property. In Nebraska City he worked as a baker and confectioner, eventually going into the grocery business—to which he devoted the rest of his life and built up a large and prosperous trade. Waldsmith and his wife were very involved in the reorganized church of the Latter-Day Saints—Waldsmith being the seventh person to join after the organization of the Nebraska District south of the Platte River and was soon elected Elder. “He has had charge of the work of the church in this city since the society was organized here, and under his able administration it has flourished, and now owns, free from encumbrance, a substantial brick church on Second Corso street, between Sixth and Seventh streets. He is Superintendent of the Sunday-school, and is an active worker in it… Mr. Waldsmith was a Republican from the formation of the party, casting his first vote for J.C. Fremont, until 1886, when he joined the rank of the Prohibitionists.” Waldsmith would also serve as an elected member and president of Nebraska City’s City Council.

SOME REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGES:

On Illinois: “The soil [in Illinois] is very rich and productive, that is well adapted to the raising of corn and wheat. I have been told by good authority that they rais from seventy five to one hundred bushels of corn per acre on an average one year with another. The land is principally prairie, timber and running water is scarce.”

On Missouri, Slavery, etc.: “Missouri is situated in a splendid climate. The land is rich and productive but is poorly tilled. This I verily believe would soon be one of the foremost states in our union for agriculture if it was not for that damnable curse called slavery, the agitation of which has been rageing in this part of the country that I now live for the past two years. [Missouri] is poorly improved for the age of the state. There are towns in it that if they were in any free state would I know, by my own experience be as much as eight or ten times as large as they now are for the age of them.”

St. Louis, Jefferson City, and Iowa: “I have seen but one large thrifty place in the state and that was St. Louis which is situated on the Illinois line. This is considerable of a place but the State Capitol Jefferson City is rather a scaly looking place. Iowa is a good state for one of its age that is the new or northern part of it mostly prairie but the greatest affections is the deep snows and howling winds of winter.”

On Kansas, Slavery, “Border Ruffians of Missouri,” Illegal Voting, etc.: “I have viewed a part of the Territory of Kansas that about fills my eye. The climate is mild. The soil is rich and fertile. The black ground, loom or soil, on the top of the ground, is from 2 to eight feet deep, and as mellow as a pile of ashes when the ground becomes tillable. This country is mostly prairie land, and is covered with a thick though sod that takes from 4 to 5 yoke of cattle to break and consequently it takes some time for this sod to rot or pulverize, after which they can raise enormous crops of corn and wheat and vegitables of all kinds. I aprehend sir, that the citizens of Kansas are now a more happy people than they ever have been heretofore in consequence of the slavery agitation, which now, or will soon be, driven from their suny territory. I was in the territory the next week after the election this fall and learned that the free state men had carried the day, almost unanimous. Therefore I presume that the bogus laws of Kansas which were enacted during Pierce’s administration by the Border Rufians of Missouri will now soon be repealed, and a code of free state laws adopted that is now, and always has been suitable and agreeable to the actual settlers of the territory or at least the or of them. There is not a doubt in the world but that the Missourians themselves have always rushed to the territory at the times of election and proceeded to the polls and voted illegally. I take no heresay for this but the Missourians themselves which I saw some of returning home this fall after the election that I heard saw with my own ears that they had been over and voted. which I saw […] If Kansas is ever admitted into our glorious union with a free state constitution, and our pacific Rail Road ever reaches it which I know it will, as it is now completed within some sixty miles of the line already, it will be, before many years, one of the greatest states in the west.”

On Nebraska Territory, Native Americans, etc.: “I have located myself for the present here in the Territory of Nebraska about 50 miles north of the Kansas line, where they are yet plenty of the red men of the forest. There were some 3 hundred of them encamped within three quarters of a mile from where my house now stands about the time I first came here. A person can see them in this part of the country very frequently. Yet they are harmless and perfectly peaceable when they are here amongst us. But the people here tell me that one or two men alone would be hardly safe to go out west of this 150 or 200 miles […] My nearest neighbor by the name of John Starks raised some turnips here this season, one of which I saw him weigh and it weighed 18 pounds. Vegitation of all kinds grow large and thrifty here such as potatoes mellons pumpkins and garden vegitables of all kinds. I never saw such an immense crop of potatoes as there are here this season. I got 15 bushels of them for one day and a half work. There are lots of farmers here that have from three to five hundred bushels of potatoes this fall and there are a great many that are now frozen in the ground […] For wild fruits—such as plumbs grapes walnuts hazel nuts &c no one would imagine the quantities that grew here last season, except thos persons that saw them […] Horses bring 1 to 2 hundred dollars cows from 25 to 40 dollars butter sells at 50 cts per lb readily corn at 40 cts per bushel flour at 4 dollars and 50 cts per cwt lumber from 25 to 30 dollars per thousand feet wood 4 dollars per cord. A man can get 1 dollar per cord for cutting it. I was offered 6 hundred dollars for to cut and cord 6 hundred cord. Wages here for common labor are from one dollars to one fifty per day and boarded 2 dollars and board yourself.”

On Wyoming City & Nebraska City: “These western wilds are settling up verry fast and land is taken up by emigrants verry fast. I have got about 100 acres of land here that I consider rather a handsome location for a farm for this western country. It is situated right on the edge of the Missouri River one of the greatest streams in the world for steam boat navigation. It is also situated just half way between two of the briskest towns in the territory. 12 miles from each town. Wyoming City on the north and Nebraska City on the south. The latter of the two commenced building a little over 2 years ago and is now about the size if not larger than Mifflintown PA. Wyoming started up last spring and is now about 4 times as large as your Johnstown, Juniata County, PA. This is the way the west is improving.”

A rich letter by an early Mormon settler and businessman in Nebraska City who evidently contributed much to its development.

REFERENCES: Portrait and Biographical Album of Otoe and Cass Counties, Nebraska (Chicago: Chapman Brothers, 1889), pp. 317–318.

CONDITION: Very good, old folds, a few soiling spots; overall very little loss to the text.