1878-1896: Moving West
The Chapin and McNeil families had begun moving westward in the 1830s when they left their homes in the northeast to settle in Ohio. While some members of the family like Harriett Pepple and Angie McNeil made a more permanent home in Ohio, Lucinda and Dennis Chapin continued westward in the 1850s to the relative frontier of Champaign county. By the 1870s the farming frontier had moved further west yet again. The Chapin family’s oldest son, Oscar, had already moved to Kansas with his new wife, Katie, at the end of the 1860s. In 1878 Oscar was joined by his sibling Marcia Christy and her husband Richard.
Closing the frontier
The period from 1878 until the final Chapin-McNeil family letter in 1895 saw the closing of the Western frontier, as further settlement and the rapidly expanding rail network connected the disparate settlers of the West closer together (Jones 1998). The closing of the frontier, and indeed the Chapin and Christy families’ ability to settle in Kansas was reliant upon the US Army and the federal government disrupting, displacing, and destroying indigenous ways of life.
The indigenous population of the Western United States was removed from their homelands to make way for white settlers, sometimes through lopsided or deceitful treaties, and sometimes through force of arms. Because the newcomers wanted the best tracts of land for themselves, native peoples were pushed into small reservations often located in undesirable or inhospitable locations (Jones 1998). The reservations, the government hoped, would help to pacify Native Americans and convince them to forsake their nomadic “savage way of life” for a more easily governable settled agrarian society. Systematic attempts were made at this time to obviate native cultures and force the assimilation of indigenous groups to the “American way of life” (Jones 1998).
The Chapins, Christys, and other white settlers were not the only people coming to settle land recently wrought by the government from native groups. A few former slaves looking to make a new start headed to Kansas following the end of the Civil War. These former enslaved people were dubbed “Exodusters.” However these groups were often met with hostility by white settlers, and many black settlements quickly dwindled in size in the face of this opposition (Library of Congress 2018).
Hardship and family support on the homestead
Life on the frontier was fraught with challenges. One persistent problem during these years for the Chapin and Christy families were the consistent swarms of grasshoppers, which began in 1866 and continued with varying intensity over the following fifteen years. he Chapin family lost cattle to lightning strikes, a horse, and Oscar sustained serious physical injury due to the strenuous exertions required. However, new technologies and modern infrastructure meant they did not have to be entirely self reliant.
The railroad and postal system meant that these settlers could rely upon a supportive network of family and friends from Illinois. Beyond the constant exchanges of correspondence, the settlers could also receive goods that were more readily available in Illinois purchased by their loved ones, such as ice cream, shoes, and fabric. The Chapin women also commonly mailed each other fruit and vegetable seeds. Horticulture was a vital part of these women’s lives, as the family garden was generally under their remit, and was the source of daily sustenance.
The letters in the collection from 1877-1895 exhibit the fortitude and perseverance of these families in the face of substantial hardship. More importantly perhaps, they also serve to highlight the strength of the love and affection of the Chapin family.