Research Catalog
Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America
- Title
- Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America / Daniel Blake Smith.
- Author
- Smith, Daniel Blake.
- Publication
- New York : St. Martin's Press, 2016.
- Supplementary Content
- Cover image
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFE 16-10659 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- x, 275 pages : illustrations; 25 cm
- Summary
- "In the early years after the Revolution, Americans were on the move, seeking to establish a new way of life. And, more than the church or the school or the courthouse, it was the family that nurtured the American Dream. In this novel-like narrative, Daniel Blake Smith vividly brings to life the Fletchers, a family of loving, ambitious, at times insecure pioneers who scattered across the vast expanse of post-revolutionary America but kept in touch through letters despite their wildly different life paths. On a hard scrabble farm in Vermont, the patriarch, Jesse Fletcher, struggled with debt and depression but managed to educate his children, especially his son Elijah, a Yankee who moved to Virginia, shocked by the horrors of slavery but then seduced by the plantation lifestyle. Another son, Calvin, left at age 17 for Indianapolis to become a self-made lawyer, banker, and a prominent citizen and passionate abolitionist. The grandchildren include Indiana, a women's education activist who donated her home to create Sweet Briar College; black sheep Lucian, who went to California to join in the gold rush; and physician Billy captured as a spy during the Civil War. Through letters and diaries, we find that the Fletchers appear surprisingly similar to us; they dream, fret, fight, and love. Despite numerous heartaches and setbacks, their spirit of enterprise, sacrifice, mobility, and education endures as American values to this day"--
- Subjects
- Contents
- Beginnings -- Heading West -- Settling In -- "The Best Fortune We Can Give Our Children" -- Public Life -- Calamities -- War and Loyalty -- Legacies.
- Call Number
- JFE 16-10659
- ISBN
- 9781137279811
- 1137279818
- LCCN
- 2015028245
- OCLC
- 2015028245
- Author
- Smith, Daniel Blake.
- Title
- Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America / Daniel Blake Smith.
- Publisher
- New York : St. Martin's Press, 2016.
- Edition
- First edition.
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Connect to:
- Research Call Number
- JFE 16-10659