Letters of Western Expansion

     This article, "Letters of Western Expansion" by Kathryn Burke, states that the only way for communities to communicate over long distances were through letters.  These letters reveal the gravity of the decision to leave home to travel to the West.  One settler, Anna Briggs, traveling to the West to start a new life, says she uses letters to "keep up a kind of acquaintance and not feel like a stranger in my own dear native land, if ever I should visit it again.”  The phrase implying that she might not return home was due to the to travel technology in the 19th century.  Another popular group of settlers were the missionaries, who would teach native Americans about their religion.  Some missionaries experienced retaliation and were killed, even after living with them for years, due to the spread of diseases that the missionaries and white people had given them.  However, there was another form of expansion in the country, employment expansion in the East.  Newly developed factories would often look to hire traditional farm women, having them work 14 hour shifts.  These women would travel for these jobs, and it was common for them too write back to their families quite often, which is how life in textile factories was learned.  This shows that the lives of many different types of people can be revealed in the letters they had written.