A NEW LIFE IN A NEW COUNTRY

Rhoda Graypaull  lived with her sisters, brothers and cousin in the tything of Dommett in the parish of Buckland St Mary, Somerset, under the north ridge of the Blackdown Hills "said to be a favourite haunt of fairies and hobgoblins."

Her mother had died and father was to remarry. His new wife had several daughters of her own so in 1850 Rhoda, her sister Joan and cousin Susanna determined to leave and set up home and a grocers shop in Buckland St Mary using the legacy left them by their mother, leaving younger sisters Elizabeth and Ann (blinded in an accident in childhood) to housekeep for their father. This was a very unconventional thing for single women to do at that time and many thought it would end in disaster.  But against all odds the shop thrived, adding haberdashery and dressmaking.  Rhoda travels to Taunton with her brother to buy stock where she first meets George Hodder Salter, son of a Dorchester farmer and slaughterman  He however marries cousin Susanna in January 1853 and leaves for New York on Endeavour. On the eve of her departure Susanna makes Rhoda promise to care for her family if anything should befall her in the New World.

Whilst the shop in Buckland flourishes Susanna, now in Charlotte gives birth to two children. Sadly the first child and mother die leaving George Salter  a griefstruck widow and alone with the new born baby.  He writes to Rhoda's father enclosing with the letter a note to Rhoda asking her to join him to care for the child, explaining that to maintain respectability  for her to live in the same house as him he would marry her, a marriage of convenience.

Rhoda is torn between her shop and her promise but when her father presses her to marry the local parish curate she is determined to keep her promise. Meanwhile her sister Elizabeth has married Robert Vickery of Otterford and also emigrated to New York.

She sells the shop and departs from Liverpool for New York where she meets George and travels by paddlesteamer three days up the Hudson River to Albany, then by steamboat along the Erie canal to Rochester, and stagecoach, on corduroy roads, to Charlotte, New York State. where they marry the very moment they arrive on 10th February, 1857.

This a synopsis of just the first four chapters of the  novel DOUBLE WEDDING RING written by  Patricia Wendorf which follows the fortunes of the Vickery and Salter families and their life and struggles in the New World over the next 35 years.  A jolly good read which I thoroughly recommend.