Chapter 5: poverty and sickness, 1840-1850.
- Famine in Cincinnati. -- summer at the East. -- plans for literary work. -- experience on a railroad. -- death of her brother George. -- sickness and despair. -- a journey in search of health. -- goes to Brattleboroa watercure. -- troubles at Lane Seminary. -- cholera in Cincinnati. -- death of youngest child. -- determined to leave the West.
On January 7, 1839, Professor Stowe wrote to his mother in Natick, Mass.:
You left here, I believe, in the right time, for as there has been no navigation on the Ohio River for a year, we are almost in a state of famine as to many of the necessities of life. For example, salt (coarse) has sold in Cincinnati this winter for three dollars a bushel; rice eighteen cents a pound; coffee fifty cents a pound; white sugar the same; brown sugar twenty cents; molasses a dollar a gallon; potatoes a dollar a bushel. We do without such things mostly; as there is yet plenty of bread and bacon (flour six and seven dollars a barrel, and good pork from six to eight cents a pound) we get along very comfortably. Our new house is pretty much as it was, but they say it will be finished in July. I expect to visit you next summer, as I shall deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Dartmouth College; but whether wife and children come with me or not is not yet decided.Mrs. Stowe came on to the East with her husband
