Temporary record

Horace Healy set out from Middlebury, Genessee Co., NY, on 30 May 1838 to emigrate to Illinois. He boarded the steamer Anthony Wayne at Buffalo and travelled the Great Lakes through Detroit and around the northern Lower Peninsula, eventually debarking at Chicago. He then continued westward by wagon, horse, steamer, and on foot. Healy was a religious man who frequently travelled with others during the many legs of his journey. His faith sustained him through the loneliness, fear, and feelings of displacement felt by many emigrants, and religious overtones permeate his diary. The descriptions he provided are often specific, but lack breadth of description or analysis. His tone is often very dark and suffused with something like an apocalyptic awareness of mortality. However, Healy thoroughly documents the complex route he travelled, his religious experiences en route (internal and in communion with others), and he provides some of the motivations for his choice of direction at various junctures, whether it be travelling companions, physiography, weather, or religious experience. His homesickness and feelings of not belonging may have led him to return to Chicago (mid-June, 1838) and then home again by Great Lakes steamer to Michigan.

Several experiences deeply moved Healy during his voyage, apparently strengthening his religious beliefs. Among these was a visit to the gravesite of Soldiers at Fort Dearborn massacred by Indians in 1813, others who died of cholera in 1832, causing him to reflect on the humanity of the deceased, and the pity of them for having died so distant from their relatives.

M-2483

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