Elihu B Washburne Research Papers

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Elihu B Washburne was born in Livermore, Maine on September 23, 1816. Elihu was the third of eleven children of Israel and Martha Washburn. In 1829, his father was forced to close the family store, so the family resorted to farming. Growing up, Elihu went to school at District 7, which was a school house located very close to the farm. When he was seven, Elihu went to live with his grandparents in Raynham, Massachusetts, where he took care of animals and the garden while he went to school. Seven years later, Elihu was back home, and forced to work on the neighbouring Lovewell’s farm for five months in order to work off his father’s twenty five dollar debt. Even though his father sent Elihu, along with some of his brothers to pay his debts, …show more content…

“I have pretty much made up my mind to go that way, or to the far west, bearing circumstances to determine which way.” In 1840 Elihu graduated and passed the bar, later the same year he moved west to Galena, Illinois. In Galena he met one Charles S. Hempstead with whom, after a few months, he set up a law practice. In 1848 Elihu visited Washington to have ties between himself and John Freedley settled in court. Upon conclusion of his court business he observed goings on and interviewed with Truman Smith, a member of the General Zachary Taylor’s administration. When posed the question “What do you want?” by Mr. Smith Elihu Elihu responded “That might be a matter for future consideration.” As stated in his letter from December 12, 1848. Elihu soon returned to Illinois and continued practicing …show more content…

Sidney is addressed mainly in those letters written while he was still in Maine or going to school in Cambridge. Very often his letters would contain rants, sometimes the subjects were not even individuals: it was sometimes clothing, sometimes politics, sometimes it was about a certain place or object of interest. The subjects would vary from the political party of Whigs, to the specific cloth he’d like to obtain. For a lover of clothes and style, Elihu often regarded the clothes given to him by his brother and mother as “revolting” or unworthy of his wear on the rare occasion he would find them to be decent. Sometimes Elihu does not seem like a particularly nice person, he often insults or questions the integrity of others. His family is even a target for his scorn, as shown in letter 165-6 when he says to his mother “But I sincerely pray you will not undertake to make them for me, unless you are smarter than you are now.”A large majority of his letters consisted of requests for a number of people to deliver money in order for him to pay assorted bills, or pleas for discounts from Algernon’s dry goods store. He was generally grateful for the support Algernon gave him financially numerous times. A similarly large amount focus on the recent news from Israel or the rest of the Washburn family. He spoke often of ambiguously named friends and other acquaintances, often using nicknames in

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