Letters from the West

Letters From the West; Or a Caution to Emigrants, written by John S. Wright and published in 1819, presents the impressions of the author regarding settlement in the Ohio Valley. Having just completed a six months trip there, where he had gone 'as a plain practical farmer to judge for myself of the merits of a country so highly extolled,' Wright came back profoundly disillusioned. He believed his own experience demonstrated that before any man removed his family to a distant country, he ought first to visit it and judge of it himself. Wright's collection of letters serve as a forceful reminder that not everyone found the West to his liking. Not until Wright re-entered New York State did he recover his enthusiasm. In the western-most country of Chautauqua he at last came upon the kind of country for which he had searched.