SOLON ROBINSON, 1845 415 



thousands of western acres. The little cabin is alone 

 standing; all else is swept away. As we rise again upon 

 the 25 mile wide prairie, which our road lies across, we 

 see five miles ahead, a most enormous frame house, which 

 was built, (all but putting together,) in Rhode Island, 

 and now stands a monument of a bad speculation, tower- 

 ing its three or four stories far above the half dozen little 

 tenements below, that rise from the town of Delavan, a 

 name that sounds familiar in the ears of all teetotalers. 1 

 This town was projected for a "colony;" whether it 

 was a part of the project that the colonists should live 

 without wood, I am not informed, but certes there is 

 but little in sight, and that little far away to the west, 

 while eastward lies untold miles of prairie, and south- 

 ward along our road a long 12 miles will bring us to an 

 only house, with just about timber enough to fill an old 

 fashion New-England fire-place, but for eight miles more, 

 there is no one to claim a share of this poor pittance of 

 fuel or interfere with this ocean of prairie. To day we 

 cross several creeks that would be good mill-streams, but 

 unfortunately there is neither fall or good banks. The 

 bridges are dilapidated by the high water and natural 

 quick decay of timber in a damp climate, and the roads 

 such as nature made them, with but little labor from this 

 non-road-working community. The night we'll spend at 

 what is somewhat rare, a comfortable country inn, at a 

 small specimen of a village called Middletown, so called 



1 In 1833 an association was formed in Providence, Rhode Island, 

 for the purpose of establishing a temperance colony in the West. 

 Three years later the company issued stock to the amount of 

 $25,000 and appointed a committee to lay out a town on the Illi- 

 nois prairies, which was named for Edward Cornelius Delavan, 

 of Albany, New York, reformer and publisher of temperance jour- 

 nals. Holdings (160-acre farm and town lot 300 feet square) 

 were sold at auction in Providence. The Delavan House, men- 

 tioned by Robinson, was the first building erected, and there Wil- 

 liam Crossman, agent for the company, settled with his family in 

 October, 1837. The Delavan House became important as a hotel 

 for stage passengers from Springfield to Peoria. Letter from 

 Ayer Public Library, Delavan. 



