Clearing the wilderness was too heavy...

At the Edge of the Orchard
by Tracy Chevalier, 2016

"After his marriage¹ he left Washington for the Ohio county. He built a cabin and made his home in Delaware County about 80 miles south of the present city of Cleveland, Ohio. But he was sick much of the time, for one thing the water did not agree with him, another, the labor of clearing the wilderness was too heavy for him. So they drove back to Connecticut, the wife driving with the two babies² and the sick husband on a mattress in the wagon."

The above quote provides a brief glimpse into the lives of my fourth great-grandparents, William Ferris Calhoun (1811-1881) and his wife Lemira Esther Tracy (1815-1893). William and Lemira left their Connecticut home — and their extended families — and headed west where they were enumerated in the 1840 census.³ Unlike other settlers who sacrificed everything to forge a new home in the wilderness, the Calhouns returned to the relative comfort of Connecticut.

In Tracy Chevalier's At the Edge of the Orchard, Sadie and James Goodenough also leave Connecticut in search of opportunity. The novel begins in 1838 as the couple and their five surviving children are attempting to eke out a living in the Great Black Swamp in the northwestern corner of Ohio. One of the conditions for proving up on their land is an orchard of fifty producing fruit trees.

James has a deep nostalgia for sweet apples — a Pitmaston Pineapple to be exact — while Sadie has developed a taste for the apple jack alcohol made from tart apples as a way to cope with their harsh hardscrabble life. Their differing views on what to plant has James and Sadie locked in a bitter power struggle which leads to disastrous consequences for the entire Goodenough family. Real-life character Johnny 'Appleseed' Chapman provides the catalytic foil in the battle between James and Sadie. 

Years later the story picks up with their youngest son, Robert, as he meanders across the country as far west as he can go: California. While there he hears tell of some giant trees and eventually sets out to see them... the Calaveras Grove of Sequoias and in the process begins to reconcile his tragic past and rekindles his own love of trees.

Chevalier captures brilliantly the bone-crushing hardship, isolation and embittered struggle that I imagine my own ancestors might have faced as they attempted to carve out a new life for themselves. Unlike the Goodenoughs, the Calhouns succumbed to their disillusionment and returned to Connecticut. At the Edge of the Orchard is an essential read for anyone interested in immersing themselves in frontier life and the tenacity, forebearance and, ultimately, hope necessary for survival.

                                                     

1. Washington Vital Records, 1779-1854. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records, Vol 1-55. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1994-2002. William F. Calhoun and Lemira E. Tracey, 29 Sep 1839, Washington Connecticut. 
2. The story of the Calhouns of Judea, Connecticut (in 1779 renamed Washington, Connecticut) by Mildred Ida Brannon Calhoun, 1956. Mary Clarissa Calhoun, born 18 Feb 1841 and Esther Lemira Tracy, born 15 Aug 1842, in Delaware County, Ohio. 
3. "United States Census, 1840," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHYV-HZF : accessed 23 April 2016), William Colhoun, Brown Township, Delaware, Ohio, United States; citing p. 211, NARA microfilm publication M704, roll 391.