A Mississippi Diary: From St Paul, Minnesota to Alton, Illinois, October 1894 to May 1895

"When we left Minneapolis, we were in high hopes of having a grand and glorious trip, for none of us had ever been on the water before, and it was a blessed thing we did not know some of the narrow escapes and trials we were to have. However, we got as far as Alton all in good health and strength, having gone through many anxious times, and we sincerely thanked the Lord who had watched over us, a lot of land peo¬ple with no experience as to what a really grand and mighty waters the great Mississippi is." Eliza Oddy, a teenager, wrote this remarkable account of the courage, hard work, determination and friendships that sustained the Oddy family during their seven months travelling down river on a small houseboat. Introduced by Andrew Hook, with an overview of the political and engineering efforts made to improve the navigation of the Mississippi in the nineteenth-century, and of the economic changes that may have influenced migration along it, the Diary is supplemented with a gazetteer of the locations described by Eliza. Also included are an account of the same section of the river by Mark Twain - the Mississippi's most famous steamboat pilot, illustrations of contemporary working boats, and the intriguing detail of Eliza's 1910 US patent for a window sash lock. The final part of the story is told by a descendant, Heather Eggins, in a short, illustrated family history. It reminds the reader that the Diary is one part of a bigger journey made by a working class family who emigrated from industrial Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1881 and finally settled in Alton, Illinois in 1895, in 'a place where their American dream of a better life could at last be realized'.