Voyage To Canada in 1849 Held traps For Unwary Folk, As Shown By London Letter

[...] there is possibly no better source of information than the personal letter sent by the pioneers to their relatives in the home land.

[...] One of the most interesting and informative letters [...] is today in the possession of Miss S. Lawrence. Retired teacher and poet of London. Written at London, Canada West, April 14, 1849, by Miss Lawrence's grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Lawrence, and addressed to a relative, Abram Clark, Purton, near Swindon, Wilts, England, the letter contains a detailed account of the preparation necessary for the trip to America.

[...] This reads in part as follows:
[...] 1st. Get a strong box that you will nor want to open all the way [...]. Pack up your bed and table linen, tea tray, knives, forks, candlesticks, and other useful articles.

[...] Don't sail from Liverpool. It is the great Irish emigration part. [...] Six or seven clean shirts, with proper care, will last you all the way home. Take your gallon bottle for frech water at sea, a large bioled gammon of bacon, a cheese, tea, coffee, sugar, etc., a coffee pot with a hook to hang on the bars of the grate. Be sure you sail with six or seven weeks' provisions; better to have too much than too little. [...] Wear your oldest clothes at sea, and throw them overboard

[...] At Buffalo take the steamboat. "London," for Port Stanley. This will take you about a day and a night on Lake Erie, charge about two dollars deck passage. Port Stanley is 27 miles from London. [...]

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