Eliza Steele 1841

This account is taken from the book written by Eliza R. Steele and published in 1841. The author's introduction says she traveled 4,000 miles throughout the United State and that it was compiled from notes she took and letters written during that time.

A Summer in the West Published 1841 J.S. Taylor and Co.

United States

278 pages

Original from the University of Michigan, digitized by Google Books

Madison, upon the Indiana shore, is the place where we were to strike the Ohio, if we had journeyed through Indiana as we proposed at first. A railroad leads from this town to Indianapolis, ninety-five miles, and is completed to Vernon, twenty-five miles. From Indianapolis to La Fayette is a Macadamized road, and another rail-road will soon be completed from the latter place to Lake Michigan.

That would have been our route, and we should have seen some of the best towns in Indiana. Madison is a very pretty town, and larger than any we had passed. It is built principally of brick, and we counted six churches and a court house, besides banks, foundries, factories, mills and boat yards. The streets are wide and Macadamized. It is situated upon a sloping bank of the river, while behind it, the hills which rose up to nearly three hundred feet, were covered with farms, dotted with sheep and cottages. Some handsome mansions were erected among the hills in conspicuous situations and must have commanded a fine view of the town beneath, and the river winding away through bluffs and forests in front of them.

The population is about two thousand. Madison is fifty-three miles from Louisville, and twenty miles farther is Vevay, settled by a party of emigrants from Switzerland. The river here stretches away to the north, leaving a point which is the county of Switzerland, bathed upon two sides by the Ohio, and containing very fertile soil.

Here the transplanted Swiss have made a new home, and it is a very beautiful one, occupying themselves in raising grapes. Their vineyards are very flourishing and they make much good wine. They cultivate the blue grape, Madeira grape, and the native county grape, which makes good wine. The hills here, no doubt, often resound with the songs of their father land from which they are so many miles distant.