Month: April 2022

When I was three years old I would sit next to my grandfather on the big green couch in our sun porch each morning after breakfast. He would read to me from my favorite book of nursery rhymes until he decided we needed some new material. Then he would rise from the couch and cross the room to his oak secretary with its glass bookcase and mirror above. Inside were books, maps and pictures of faraway places and people.  In front of the mirror was my grandfather’s globe.  He would hold this object, a mystery to me, and gently turn it to reveal a world I was yet to discover.

In spite of the passage of more than seventy years, this early connection with my grandfather and the vivid memory of his enthusiasm for the larger world made the discovery of his letters decades later, written between 1891 and 1914, a kind of reunion. Reading the letters that he wrote to his family from India reveals the complexity and adventure of a life on a new continent.

Finding the Letters

I found the letters in 1991 when I took on the task of selling my childhood home. This house was large Dutch colonial with a basement, attic and garage in addition to the usual living areas as well as my favorite room, the sun porch.

The accumulation of furniture, pictures and mementos from three generations made the work more like an archeological dig than simply emptying a house. In the attic were dressers with drawers long vacant of their original contents. In them were pictures of family members and events. Though I couldn’t always remember them, I did recognize them. Below these were more pictures – were these of my family? Finally, below these were daguerreotypes and tiny metal pictures with men in civil war uniforms and women in long dresses wearing bonnets. Fatigue and the pressure of time dimmed my curiosity about these ancient family members and so, into a box these went to be sorted and hopefully identified later.

By the time I got to the garage, my enthusiasm for family history was flagging. The garage posed a different challenge. Bags of solidified concrete blocked my access to three steamer trunks from the 19th century. After getting help hauling the concrete, I was able to reach the trunks. My grandparents used these to transport their belongings on their final return to the U.S. in 1914.

The first letters I found were from my great-grandfather to Lucknow, India, where my grandfather was first located. Tied with string and stored in metal biscuit tins this first group of letters was from my great-grandfather in Saybrook, IL to my grandfather in Lucknow, India.

My grandfather wrote to his parents each week from 1891 when he boarded The City of Chicago steamer for Liverpool, England until his return from India in 1914. His father wrote in response each week until his death in 1903. Both my grandfather and my great-grandfather carefully saved all these letters keeping them in their envelopes, maintaining their order and guarding against accidental loss or damage. I went on to find more letters in desk drawers and filing boxes over 1,000 in all.

These letters form an account of my grandfather’s life from age 29 when he set sail from Jersey City on The City of Chicago steamer, until his return to Quincy, Illinois in 1914.

It is my goal to publish weekly blog posts using the letters my grandfather wrote and the photographs he made to recount his experience raising a young family in the shadow of the Himalayan Mountains of northern India.

George Hewes tried his hand at farming in the early years in Illinois. Of this time M.A. Hewes writes, “There was no good market for farm products and he had a hard time financially. “I have heard him say that he hauled good wheat 30 miles to Warsaw and Nauvoo, the Mormon city, for $.35 per bushel, and dressedhogs for $1.50 per 100 lbs. One year the prairie fire ran through his place burning the corn in the field and wheat in the stack.”

“There were no churches in that section then, but the Methodist itinerant came along and Grandpa Avise opened his house for preaching and he and wife, my mother and I think an older brother Thomas Avise and wife with probably some others joined the M.E. Church and formed a class in Grandpa’s house. Probably during the 5th or 6th year of his residence here Father was converted and joined the church, and I can just remember his baptism and that of my brother Sam, then a babe, by a Methodist minister named Poole.” M.A. Hewes

M.A. relates a story from his childhood visit to his Grandpa Avise. During these years Grandfather Avise had moved to Carthage and was working at his trade of shoemaker.  When I was some six years old they left me at Grandfather’s to attend school where I remained some six weeks.  My teacher was A.W. Blakesley who afterward married Mother’s sister Hannah.  When Father and Mother came to Carthage for me, they said I crawled under the table and laughed and cried for joy at seeing them again.  I remember that Uncle Blakesley punished me once by splitting a quill pen and putting it astride my nose had me sit facing the school.  Yet I have two cards in his handwriting certifying that Avise Hewes is a good boy in school.”

Matthias Avise writes about his own conversion. “…the time of my conversion was about the middle of March 1851.” Rev. Jesse Cromwell was the preacher on the Payson Circuit at the time. He was a Kentuckian, not a great preacher but a fine exhorter and held a fine meeting at the time mentioned. He had good social qualities, but was a slave to his pipe and tobacco. Mrs. George Sinnock left the Baptist church and joined the Methodists at that meeting. I had felt for months that I ought to be religious, and one night at this meeting as Bro. Cromwell was closing for the evening he warned the congregation not to slight the wooings of the Holy Spirit. I went forward two nights and on the second was to my own mind clearly and consciously forgiven my sins”.

Matthias Avis went on to become a preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church serving churches in northern Illinois until his death in 1904.