(a non gardening post for once!, looking back before Esperanza was created here)

Morris, Julie’s husband, spent most of the winter, and sometimes year, in New Orleans. How did he go back and forth to Hartford? In the early years of the 1840’s and into the 1850’s, he had to take the long route by ship up and around the coast, unless he wished to go by overland stage: uncomfortable and long.  He may also have taken a riverboat as far up the Ohio as possible, then connected to overland stage-routes, as his business did have offshoots in the Kentucky/Ohio/Tennessee region.

However, in 1855 a rail line to Cairo was completed.   It was now possible to travel by train on the Illinois Central to Chicago or on the Ohio and Mississippi to Cincinnati.  From both cities rail lines had been built that connected to New York during the 1850’s.  Judging by comments in his letters, Morris regarded the trip back to New York/Hartford as a matter simply of catching a boat to Cairo and hopping on a train. Nor was Morris alone in this view, business traffic from New Orleans and the Mississippi were solidly tied into the northern system of railroads constructed during the 1850’s.  This traffic was going around the south on both sides and the great coastal cities of the south were no longer stopping points.  Cairo, Cincinnati, St Louis, and Chicago however, those were the new stopping points….  Something that became rather important in the following decade…