Just as Americans are today, our ancestors tended to be a restless lot, always on the look out for ways to improve their lives. By the 1840s and ’50s, people were becoming increasingly aware of “the West.” These were no longer the overly optimistic gold seekers, but farmers, tradesmen and merchants who had heard stories of pioneers “striking it rich” by planting crops in unbelievably rich soil, making the implements that were needed for the work and selling them to the farmers, ranchers and other settlers who were constantly arriving. Some of the stories they heard were believable, some were fanciful, but most predicted fortunes were to be made.

Recognizing the near universal appeal of some reality in the mix, the editor of the Oxford Democrat of March 26, 1858, came upon a letter from a realist, and printed it in the paper.

       “ABOUT THE WEST”

“I am frequently asked and sometimes written to for my opinion in relation to the West, and also the East, by persons who are desirous of making a home for themselves. And, while I feel this subject of unbounded importance, I shall proceed, once and for all, through your paper, to briefly answer that double question with such views, as I may deem proper, hoping that I have had experience and observation enough to justify the same. The Western country is a broad and good country. If I am to say it is a country of great advantages to the most of people at this day, I must also say that it is subject to disadvantages; still, I leave that point to some better scholar than myself to point out whether, or not, it is any better than small advantages connected with small disadvantages. The time has passed by for the people of the Western country to reach the advantages without capital, but they may rest assured that they can reach all the disadvantages without much effort. The whole country, comparatively speaking, is in the hands, or partially under the control of land jobbers, and land monopolizers, and in my judgment, it is worse than folly for a man without capital to take his family and spend all he has to get there for the purpose of being shaved [swindled] — for if he gets shaved here, he didn’t have to go to any extra expense for the application. The land jobber boasts of what he has made there. Very well. What he has made, by monopolizing, the poor operator has to pay or live (or stay) under a canvas tent by the roadside without any permanent home. Let those who do not believe this to be a fact, go and see. It is not to be expected that all who move for a home in this State will confine themselves within the limits of the State. Perhaps that is all right. At the same time, we have a class of citizens as worthy as any other class, whose desire is to live and die in Maine, if they can in any honorable way come into possession of a comfortable home. Well, it gives my heart a comfortable sensation to be able to tell them that they can accomplish that object if they will make the effort. I have been into more than half the States of this Union, California included. I have also been to the Aroostook Valley and to make a comfortable, happy home, with a reasonable expectation of obtaining the necessary comforts of life, with proper prudence and industry, I should choose the latter. If enough of our own good citizens would form a company, select a township, clear a patch of land, put up cabins, and arrange to bring on their families by the time the crops are ready to harvest, in five years they might have a good, comfortable home. Land is cheap and good, the State is liberal, no unrighteous rent to pay, wood, timber, fencing and building material, all plenty there, and of good quality as any portion of the world can boast of, with an abundance of good water. For wheat, it is better than the State will average. The land is superior for potatoes, oats, will raise fair rye and I have seen good corn raised there of the small kind, and we believe that on select grounds it can be raised every year. Grass is excellent; and the sugar maple give you enough of sweetening. Other things I might enumerate, but must cut short. What is called the warm season is shorter than in more southern latitudes, but this is made up by the rapidity with which seeds vegetate and come to maturity. This is my opinion, and I have got to learn more before I can say as much of any other place. The climate is good, winters fair milder than in this section, and no such raking winds as we experience here. Snow, a choice blessing, is needed to handle the immense amount of lumber, and is not found wanting. And, old friends, with all the gassing against Maine, has got the materials, and in due time will stand as high in the estimation of sensible men as most of her sisters.”

“Yours, R. T. Lurvey”

A different item in a later paper referred to the writer as “Colonel” Lurvey. Presumably an Army officer of that day would have travelled around the country quite a bit.

It should be noted that writers of that era have an affinity for very long paragraphs and run-on sentences. The punctuation, which we have tried to reproduce here as accurately as humanly possible, is at best capricious.

The terminology Lurvey uses is that of his time. For example, when he says the “State is liberal,” he is not using that word as it is used today, especially in an election year. He’s saying that it’s not the domain of the privileged few, as he’d earlier said about the West. Another example is in another place where he refers to “all the gassing against Maine.” In that case, he’d simply used a very common term in that day to indicate what we’d politely refer to as  “hot air.” Our advice to our 21st century readers is that words change meanings over time and also carry different implications. If a 19th-century dictionary isn’t available, try the unabridged version at the library.

In closing on the subject, we do not really know exactly what a “land jobber” did. Obviously whoever they were or whatever they did, Lurvey didn’t like them.