Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America

The Resource Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America
Label
Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America
Title remainder
the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America
Statement of responsibility
Daniel Blake Smith
Creator
Author
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
"In the early years after the Revolution, Americans were on the move, seeking to establish a new way of life. More than the church, school or 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"--
Assigning source
Provided by publisher
Biography type
collective biography
Cataloging source
DLC
Dewey number
  • 973.5092/2
  • B
Illustrations
  • illustrations
  • portraits
Index
index present
LC call number
CT274.F593
LC item number
S65 2016
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography
Target audience
adult

Context

Context of Our family dreams : the Fletchers' adventures in nineteenth-century America

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