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BACKGROUND NOTES TO A COLLECTION OF SETTLER LETTERS: THE VARLEYS OF TADCASTER
The Varleys were an old Yorkshire family, who had lived in Tadcaster for many years and certainly since the end of the eighteenth century. The area around York had long had a market-gardening community, supplying produce to Leeds and York. According to the family stories that I heard from my father, Bill Turner (grandson of ‘little James’ of the letters), the Varleys were market gardeners for most of the nineteenth century. For example, my father told me how James Varley and his brothers had thought little of walking to the markets in York and Leeds – there and back in the day with their livestock. But then, after Samuel Varley emigrated in the early 1830’s, leaving only his son Thomas in England the Varleys somehow changed course.
According to the family stories that I heard they had set up a private school and they lived in Stafford House. It seems to me likely that they had also acquired property around the village and even perhaps in London. Certainly, they have left behind evidence of achieving education: I have Latin books that belonged to James Varley as well as other books of literature and learning. Alfred Varley ceased to work when he was just forty, devoting himself instead to his garden, his many hives of bees and to reading, philosophy and the study of religions.
The finding of the letters
The first I heard of these letters was when my father brought them back to Chester after one of his trips to see Aunt Louise in Tadcaster. The year was 1960 and I was at Durham University reading psychology; it was therefore of some interest to me to hear that she was hearing voices (Uncle Alfred had returned from death and his voice was in her oven). Sadly, she had already made a bonfire in the garden, burning many of what were described as old ‘settler letters’. My father had, however, managed to save seven of the letters, bringing them back to Chester out of harm’s way.
Fortunately, my father had managed to read the letters which went onto the bonfire; he told me how they described in wonderful detail the harsh conditions of their voyage across the Atlantic.
The transcription
In the mid-sixties I was working at the London School of Economics, where I paid a highly skilled secretary to produce the first set of transcripts. I sent copies to a Historical Society in Peoria. Also copies were placed on an early American Computer Record of Settler letters. I sent a copy to Alistair Cooke (I don’t know what he did with them!) and a copy was also lodged in the Office of the Secretary of State, Illinois State Archives.
I have now produced a revised edition of the letters and I would like to contact once again local American Historical Societies, perhaps using Internet contacts to try and trace possible descendants in America.
The Varley family in England
I suspect that there are now no direct English descendants of Samuel Varley with the family name. I have placed a family tree in Appendix 1, which shows that ‘little James’ had seven children. Of his four sons only Arthur married and his daughter Kitty remained unmarried. According to the family stories that came down to me, there were two significant characteristics of the Varleys; they tended to live to a great age (e.g. of James’s children, 3 survived into their nineties, the remainder dying at ages 58 (Cecil), 78 (Arthur) and 89 (Agnes). James himself was said to have lived into his nineties, as also his brother Westwood.
The other characteristic that seemed to sum up the family was that of being educated for their times. We can see from the letters that Samuel had a sharp, not to say flowing turn of phrase. I remember my grandmother Florence who was highly articulate and she was still completing crosswords when she was well into her eighties. The same was undoubtedly true of Uncle Aflred. Family stories described others who had been teachers.
Aunt Louise was a daughter of James Varley, and hence great grand- daughter of Samuel Varley. Her life story seemed to me to have been poignantly sad. I gather that she had married in about 1920, taking as her husband a chemist. But, a few weeks later she was admitted to a lunatic asylum, having been taken ill on her honeymoon, perhaps swept up in the influenza and encephalitis epidemics that followed the Great War. I understand that she was placed in a large mental hospital in the South of England, being visited regularly by her husband. Twenty years later she was discharged and returned to Tadcaster. I met her in the late nineteen fifties when I visited Tadcaster; she lived next door but one to her brother Alfred and she kept a corner shop, selling sweets and tobacco. At that time she was well into her eighties and she lived until she was 94 years old.
Emigration and the prairies in the 1830’s
I had just started to make my second transcript of the letters when I heard a radio programme about Frances Trollope (also known as Fanny), the mother of the English writer, Anthony Trollope. She had put her son in a very harsh boarding school in England (for which, incidentally, he never forgave his mother!) and travelled to the American mid-west. She was one of the early women journalist travellers, who wrote highly descriptive accounts of the new emigration to America,
Fanny had achieved a degree of celebrity as her book caused a major diplomatic crisis between America and England when she wrote about the uncouth Americans and their domestic manners. Her book, ‘Domestic Manners of the Americans’ was published in London in 1832. To some extent the precarious diplomatic relations between America and England can be understood in terms of the still fresh memories of the American War of Independence, as well as the even more recent armed conflict between the two countries in the 1820’s.
What I found particularly interesting in Fanny Trollope were her descriptions of Peoria and Cincinnatti and the way of life that is brought to life in the letters. For example, the blowing up of the river steamboats as well as the poor state of the animals and the severity of life in the prairies. At a less tangible level, Fanny Trollope deplores the uncouthness of the Yankees in just the same way as the American letters describes the rough way of their American neighbours.
The Varley family in America
These seven letters provide a picture of early America. It was a time when groups of families emigrated; they went as tradesmen, or as in the case of the Varleys they took their experience and skills as farmers and market-gardeners. In the letters the writers refer to others in Peoria and Cincinnatti who had emigrated from the Tadcaster area. In fact, one letter was written by Sarah Kerner specifically to tell James Varley about what to expect if he were to emigrate; she had also found a job for him in a local business.
I wonder how unusual it was for someone as old as Samuel to emigrate from England? The son he left behind in England (Thomas) had been born in 1804 (see Appendix 2 for photograph). This suggests that Samuel himself was well into his forties or even early fifties by the time he emigrated.
The seven letters trace the family’s progress in establishing themselves in the new lands. Undoubtedly, for all his literary skills, Samuel was a difficult man; his wife was long-suffering and probably she had been reluctant to embark on the journey to Peoria (that much is suggested by her daughter in one letter). Only Mathew stayed with his father for the whole 12 years that the letters span.
The harshness of life and the prevalence of disease are well described in the letters. It is one thing to see the romanticised Hollywood steamboats on the Mississipi; it is quite another to read about the dangers of the boats, their unreliability and the awfulness of tragedies that struck when the engines blew up. Not surprisingly, the writers speak longingly of their wish to see relatives and friends again, in Heaven if not at home in England.
The last letter describes an isolated Samuel Varley, drinking heavily but still farming, supported only by his son, Mathew. The letters provide rather more information about what happened to the daughters. Mary Anne lost her first husband and remarried a Yorkshireman, William Smith. She had three children by her first husband. Sarah Varley lost her first husband (Henry Clements) and then married Jacob Kerner, a man whom she had known before her first marriage. Her son, Henry Clifton Clements, was born in 1842.
Ingram Varley died in 1849 after a long illness, leaving his widow with three children -the oldest, Thomas Varley, was mentioned in a later letter as having married and was working in a printing office. Ellen Varley had four children, of whom two were known to have survived.
The year of 1835, the date of the first letter, sees Samuel and his children living in Vine Hill, near Cincinnatti. His daughter Mary Ann was on a return journey to England for a brief trip. The family were farming 50 acres of grass land. By 1839, Ingram described how they had moved to a farm of 50 acres some 3 miles outside Cincinnatti (interestingly, an area described in detail by Fanny Trollope some eight years earlier). Sarah adds a note to his letter, saying that Mary Anne had left and they did not know if she was still alive. Later we hear that Mary Ann lost her husband and youngest child in 1841. She left her three remaining children with her parents and she had then gone off to work in Mississippi as an overseer of female slaves.
The letters of 1843 and 1845 were written by Sarah Varley who had a very poor relationship with her father, Samuel. His fortunes seem to have been mixed: in 1843 he was renting a farm of 80 acres on which he worked a varied range of crops, animals and poultry. But, by 1845 he had moved to a 400 acre farm, where Sarah and her husband were living in a log house on the farm. By this time Mary Ann had returned from Mississippi and she had remarried, cutting all links with her family. By the next letter of 1847, Samuel Varley was describing his travels across the prairies to reach Peoria where he was aiming to set up a new farm.
We then jump to 1854 when there were two letters, each written by Sarah Varley. By now she has married Jacob Kerner and she describes her home in Peoria with its front door looking out over the Valley with the Steamboats on the river and the railroad trains. Her house was on Washington Street.
Sarah describes what has happened within her family. Her mother had died some years previously. Samuel’s bad tempers and drinking had driven away all his family and he was living alone (maybe with Mathew) on his farm, some 12 miles outside Peoria. The letter hints that he was experiencing money problems and certainly he had had to raise loans including one from her husband Jacob Kerner.
Ellen had two surviving children and she was living on a 40 acre farm near Madison in the State of Indianna. Mary Anne was described as being ‘well off’, living with her second husband (William Smith) on a large farm in Brown County in Ohio. In addition, they had a second farm near Georgetown. Sarah’s son Clifton was by now 9 years old. She says that Ingram’s three children were still with his widow.
Photographs
I have placed in Appendix 2 copies of some family photographs: Thomas Varley (born in 1804 and died in 1898); you will also find photographs of James Varley, Florence Varley, Aunt Louise and Cecil Varley.
KEITH TURNER
1ST July, 1998
17, Launde Road,
OADBY, Leicester LE2 4HH
Telephone 0116 2713814