Into the old Northwest

the long version

This never-before-published collection of journals and letters, most of which reside in the Henry E. Huntington Library, tell the story of itinerant Methodist minister Charles H. Titus (1819-1878) and his exciting journey westward from Maine to visit America's mid-nineteenth-century, western frontier. After spending time in Indiana, where he attended what would become DePauw University, Titus ventured up Lake Huron and Lake Superior into the even more primitive regions of the new State of Michigan and on into Wisconsin Territory. Along the way Titus not only records his views on the state of schools, society, marriage, and religion, but also provides us with candid insights into the character of individuals like Lewis Case Douglass Houghton, and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, and splendid accounts of the various Native American groups he encountered. Captured on the pages of these letters and journals, as if in a time capsule, is the story of a New Englander's quest for education and spiritual growth within the context of America's rapidly accelerating westward expansion a century and a half ago.