What do you think?
Rate this book
Recollections of Life in Ohio: From 1813-1840
"Recollections of Life in Ohio, from 1813 to 1840," is a book of rare charm, intelligence and suggestiveness. Not one page of this most delightful and authentic record of things as they were, could be spared.
The recollections of Mr Howells, he father of the novelist, relate to a very important period in the history of Ohio, and form a careful and thorough study of the characteristics of a people destined later to develop among them one of the first American commonwealths. They are primarily the personal memoirs of the author, whose family settled in Eastern Ohio at the close of the pioneer epoch; they were Quakers from the English border of Wales and confronted all the novel hardships of the backwoods. These are graphically narrated; also deals with a later period showing the growing anti-slavery feeling of 1840.
In his old age William Cooper Howells began to write his recollection of Ohio life in the period from 1813 to 1840. The book was quite completed when he died, and his distinguished set William Dean Howells, the novelist, wrote the concluding chapter and provided the volume with an introduction. William Cooper Howells was a man of high personal character, self-educated for the most part, but of great intelligence, had the philosophic temperament and the literary impulse, published a newspaper for a number of years, started a magazine, wrote poetry, studied medicine, tried his hand at different kinds of business, and in short went through life with all the advantages and all the disadvantages that belonged to a new State like Ohio in that period. This volume is a very valuable one because of the clear and simple accounts it gives of material, intellectual and religious conditions in central Ohio in the period between the War of 1812 and the election of William Henry Harrison in 1840. It is a valuable addition to the literary memorials of a great State.
The author's son writes:
"The narrative that follows is the story of the first thirty-three years of a life that stretched to eighty-seven. It deals mainly with simple and common things in conditions whose present remoteness may well lend them an air of romance. Such as he depicts the early life of Eastern Ohio, the early life of America was every-where during the whole pioneer period. But I think his account of it is of peculiar value because he brought to the study of persons and things his peculiarly genial intelligence. It is not merely that he saw them clearly, but that he saw them kindly. The unfriendly eye always loses what is best in a prospect, and his eye was never unfriendly. He did not deceive himself concerning the past. He knew that it was often rude, and hard, and coarse; but, under the rough and sordid aspect, he was aware of the warm heart of humanity in which, quite as much as in the brain, all civility lies."
The recollections of a man who has always been in private life, and a large portion of his days in very humble circumstances, are contained in this book. The man was honest and amiable and brought up a worthy family. He had one son who has made a great reputation as a writer. This fact and the habit of making a record of the common-place event; which occurred in quiet communities, will account for the preparation of the book. It is perhaps owing to the fact that bis life covered a period when the families on the Ohio river were struggling with poverty, and society was in the process of formation that it is published; and yet thousands of other men could repeat the same story with variations.
It is well that such recollections should be photographed, and that we should not depend longer upon the ordinary means of perpetuating, such as memory, family affection, and common conversation.
The book is a pleasant picture of life in southeastern and southwestern Ohio in tne period named.
The recollections of Mr Howells, he father of the novelist, relate to a very important period in the history of Ohio, and form a careful and thorough study of the characteristics of a people destined later to develop among them one of the first American commonwealths. They are primarily the personal memoirs of the author, whose family settled in Eastern Ohio at the close of the pioneer epoch; they were Quakers from the English border of Wales and confronted all the novel hardships of the backwoods. These are graphically narrated; also deals with a later period showing the growing anti-slavery feeling of 1840.
In his old age William Cooper Howells began to write his recollection of Ohio life in the period from 1813 to 1840. The book was quite completed when he died, and his distinguished set William Dean Howells, the novelist, wrote the concluding chapter and provided the volume with an introduction. William Cooper Howells was a man of high personal character, self-educated for the most part, but of great intelligence, had the philosophic temperament and the literary impulse, published a newspaper for a number of years, started a magazine, wrote poetry, studied medicine, tried his hand at different kinds of business, and in short went through life with all the advantages and all the disadvantages that belonged to a new State like Ohio in that period. This volume is a very valuable one because of the clear and simple accounts it gives of material, intellectual and religious conditions in central Ohio in the period between the War of 1812 and the election of William Henry Harrison in 1840. It is a valuable addition to the literary memorials of a great State.
The author's son writes:
"The narrative that follows is the story of the first thirty-three years of a life that stretched to eighty-seven. It deals mainly with simple and common things in conditions whose present remoteness may well lend them an air of romance. Such as he depicts the early life of Eastern Ohio, the early life of America was every-where during the whole pioneer period. But I think his account of it is of peculiar value because he brought to the study of persons and things his peculiarly genial intelligence. It is not merely that he saw them clearly, but that he saw them kindly. The unfriendly eye always loses what is best in a prospect, and his eye was never unfriendly. He did not deceive himself concerning the past. He knew that it was often rude, and hard, and coarse; but, under the rough and sordid aspect, he was aware of the warm heart of humanity in which, quite as much as in the brain, all civility lies."
The recollections of a man who has always been in private life, and a large portion of his days in very humble circumstances, are contained in this book. The man was honest and amiable and brought up a worthy family. He had one son who has made a great reputation as a writer. This fact and the habit of making a record of the common-place event; which occurred in quiet communities, will account for the preparation of the book. It is perhaps owing to the fact that bis life covered a period when the families on the Ohio river were struggling with poverty, and society was in the process of formation that it is published; and yet thousands of other men could repeat the same story with variations.
It is well that such recollections should be photographed, and that we should not depend longer upon the ordinary means of perpetuating, such as memory, family affection, and common conversation.
The book is a pleasant picture of life in southeastern and southwestern Ohio in tne period named.
150 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1895
12 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 12, 2022
Despite efforts, I have never managed to get far into a book by William Dean Howells. It's rather ironic then that I read with enjoyment this memoir by the author's father, William Cooper Howells. In fact, I'm going to be uncharitable and say that William Cooper was the better writer.
William Cooper Howells was born in 1807, in Brecon, Wales, the son of Joseph Howells. The Howells were descended from Quaker wool manufacturers and watchmakers. In 1808, Joseph Howells decided to take his family to the wilds of Ohio, and thus started a career in lifelong fecklessness. Joseph is arrested while his worried family waits for him at the port. Current British law doesn't allow a man who knows wool manufacturing to leave the country (in case he might set up a competing industry), but the government has little to fear from Joseph. When the Howells family is finally able to leave, Joseph blows through all his capital in two failed attempts to set up a wool business. Then he fails at farming--twice.
Like his father, William has many frustrations. He plows with ponies (it doesn't occur to father Joseph to buy horses for such strenuous labor), and when his plow hits a tree root and breaks the harness, he can't knot the pieces together tightly enough with his childish hands to make it hold. Cows and pigs on a rope herd him instead of the other way around. Every year he rebuilds a clay bake oven for his mother only to see it washed away by rains and weather. He has to struggle for what little education he can get, and he has almost nothing to read. But even backwoods Ohio shows promising fruit. William's seatmate in grammar school is Edwin Stanton, later Lincoln's Secretary of War.
Nonetheless, young William loves the primordial woods of the 1810s and 1820s. Orchards are a cornocopia of fruit and nuts, and game is everywhere. But the Howells are Quaker, and don't hold with hunting or guns. So it's a long time before William manages to acquire an ancient flintlock, which needs many a click before it goes bang, by which time all the game has wised up and left. When his new hunting dog brings home a skunk, William notes that even after the carcass had been lying in a field for three months, it still stank as strongly as it did on the day it perished, if the body was disturbed. Dangerous snakes are everywhere, and one of William's younger brothers is bitten so severely that the boy is sick for an entire month, and has symptoms of snakebite every year when the same season comes around. A Howells daughter is nearly crushed by a falling log, only saved by Joseph grabbing the end of it at the last moment.
Even the Quakers are not so peaceful anymore, for they are in the process of breaking up into Orthodox and Hicksites. Though they don't punch each other, there is much shoving of chests and bumping into each other. Meanwhile, Joseph Howells decides to convert to a Methodism of the shouting and camp-meeting sort, and drags his son William along, though William is absolutely terrified at such a drastic change from his quiet Quaker faith. Joseph can lie prostrate for hours after his fits of enthusiasm, and he nearly disowns his son when the latter tries to ease away from such histrionics. But even William would become a Swedenborgian in his later years, so he wasn't proof against against the lure of oddball religions.
Recognizing his unsuitability for farming, William eventually takes to the printing trade and becomes involved with newspaper work. He takes credit for suggesting William Henry Harrison as a presidential candidate to his editor at a paper with political influence, thus starting the boom for Harrison. A devotion to the Whig cause (and later that offshoot of the Whigs, the Republican Party) results in an eventual appointment as US consul at Quebec, and, of course, William later sired that other William, who is better known than he himself is, which is not quite fair.
Available at Open Library:
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14096...
William Cooper Howells was born in 1807, in Brecon, Wales, the son of Joseph Howells. The Howells were descended from Quaker wool manufacturers and watchmakers. In 1808, Joseph Howells decided to take his family to the wilds of Ohio, and thus started a career in lifelong fecklessness. Joseph is arrested while his worried family waits for him at the port. Current British law doesn't allow a man who knows wool manufacturing to leave the country (in case he might set up a competing industry), but the government has little to fear from Joseph. When the Howells family is finally able to leave, Joseph blows through all his capital in two failed attempts to set up a wool business. Then he fails at farming--twice.
Like his father, William has many frustrations. He plows with ponies (it doesn't occur to father Joseph to buy horses for such strenuous labor), and when his plow hits a tree root and breaks the harness, he can't knot the pieces together tightly enough with his childish hands to make it hold. Cows and pigs on a rope herd him instead of the other way around. Every year he rebuilds a clay bake oven for his mother only to see it washed away by rains and weather. He has to struggle for what little education he can get, and he has almost nothing to read. But even backwoods Ohio shows promising fruit. William's seatmate in grammar school is Edwin Stanton, later Lincoln's Secretary of War.
Nonetheless, young William loves the primordial woods of the 1810s and 1820s. Orchards are a cornocopia of fruit and nuts, and game is everywhere. But the Howells are Quaker, and don't hold with hunting or guns. So it's a long time before William manages to acquire an ancient flintlock, which needs many a click before it goes bang, by which time all the game has wised up and left. When his new hunting dog brings home a skunk, William notes that even after the carcass had been lying in a field for three months, it still stank as strongly as it did on the day it perished, if the body was disturbed. Dangerous snakes are everywhere, and one of William's younger brothers is bitten so severely that the boy is sick for an entire month, and has symptoms of snakebite every year when the same season comes around. A Howells daughter is nearly crushed by a falling log, only saved by Joseph grabbing the end of it at the last moment.
Even the Quakers are not so peaceful anymore, for they are in the process of breaking up into Orthodox and Hicksites. Though they don't punch each other, there is much shoving of chests and bumping into each other. Meanwhile, Joseph Howells decides to convert to a Methodism of the shouting and camp-meeting sort, and drags his son William along, though William is absolutely terrified at such a drastic change from his quiet Quaker faith. Joseph can lie prostrate for hours after his fits of enthusiasm, and he nearly disowns his son when the latter tries to ease away from such histrionics. But even William would become a Swedenborgian in his later years, so he wasn't proof against against the lure of oddball religions.
Recognizing his unsuitability for farming, William eventually takes to the printing trade and becomes involved with newspaper work. He takes credit for suggesting William Henry Harrison as a presidential candidate to his editor at a paper with political influence, thus starting the boom for Harrison. A devotion to the Whig cause (and later that offshoot of the Whigs, the Republican Party) results in an eventual appointment as US consul at Quebec, and, of course, William later sired that other William, who is better known than he himself is, which is not quite fair.
Available at Open Library:
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14096...
February 20, 2021
lively written, personal, and politics and observation of people mixed with a human view of life. Great read.
July 3, 2025
A fascinating and authentic glimpse into the early 19th-century. The hardships, daily life, Quaker religious undertakings, good book for history enthusiasts.
One could smell the 1800's between these pages.
One could smell the 1800's between these pages.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews