Esarey-Esrey & Rhoads-Esrey Letters
Records of a 19th Century American Migration
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An Introduction to the Esarey-Esrey and Rhoads-Esrey Letters
A massive wave of westward migrating AngloAmerican settlers spanned the western three quarters of what is now the United States in about sixty years between 1790 and 1850 and then the next fifty years filled up the continent very rapidly. Because this migration was so directional in nature, many of the families involved dropped descendant branches along the way.
In the case of John and Hester Clark Essery, who left Pennsylvania in the 1780s, this migration pattern by 1850 had spread their 9 children and 45 grandchildren across Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, with a number of grandchildren by their youngest son (Jesse Esrey 1800-1855) moving to "Upper California" in the years just before the famous California Gold Rush.
Jonathon Davis Esarey
Jesse and Hannah Esrey
Another result of this tumbling migration was a divergence of the spellings of our name. Variations can be found all through the 1780 to 1860 period, but the three derivative spellings that persist among John and Hester Clark Essery's descendants (Esarey, Esrey, and Esry) had settled into use by 1875.
As illustrated by the first of these two letters, John and Hester's son Jesse changed the way he spelled his own name from Esarey to Esrey between 1814 and 1832. His descendants then branched out from Missouri and California.
The California Migration and the Donner Party
A sample of 19th century letters survives from three different sources. There are two early letters dated 1814 and 1832 between Jesse Esrey in Illinois and his brother Jonathon Davis Esarey (1783-1858) back in Indiana.
Another more extensive set of letters survives between Jesse and Hannah Esrey and their children Amanda (and her husband, Daniel Rhoads), and Jonathan, John, and Justin Esrey, all of whom had moved on to California.
These letters also are part of the documentation of a far more famous event in American history - the ordeal of the Donner Party in the California Mountains in the winter of 1846/1847. Amanda Esrey and Daniel Rhoads had successfully come through to California in the 1846 migration and Daniel took part in the rescue and documentation of the Donner Party.
Amanda and Daniel Rhoads
The History of These Letters
Jonathan Esrey
The primary person preserving letters on the California end was Earl Rhoads of San Jose, CA. Earl was born in 1892 (son of John Rhoads and grandson of Daniel and Amanda Esrey Rhoads). In Missouri, Jesse Esrey's son Niles (1835-1910) also retained some of these letters.
After 1900, some of the Esarey descendants in Perry County began to gather up Esarey family history, much of which was stored at the house of Jonathon Davis Esarey (the younger). In 1910, J. J. Esarey, a descendant of Jesse Esrey's older brother Jonathon Davis Esarey corresponded with Niles Esrey and they gathered up what they could find in the period leading up to the Esarey 1910 Centennial Reunion.
The plans were to create a book on the history of the descendants of John and Hester Essery and their migrations. The Rhoads-Esrey letters were to be a part of it. Unfortunately, these hopes were dashed with the destruction of many of the gathered resources in a house fire in January 1914.
Over the next 25 years or so, Logan Esarey (1873-1942), a professor of History at Indiana University, gathered information attempting to offset this loss and carry out the planned family history.
John Esrey
When Logan died these efforts continued by his daughter, who initially put out a draft of the research in 1949. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Myra Esarey Evans labored on various versions of the family history, finally copyrighting her completed volume of over 1000 pages in 1968 (Logan Esarey: His Ancestors & their Descendants).
There the story rested until 2002 when Stephen P. Emanuels, of Lemoore, California edited a volume of letters entitled The Rhoads-Esrey letters: 1846-1873. Emanuels obtained copies of Rhoads-Esrey letters from descendants of Earl Rhoads, descendants of Jonathan Esrey (1831-1904), and other sources in California, amassing a sample of 19 letters. Only five of the letters in Emanuels' 2002 collection duplicate those found in Myra Esarey Evans' 1968 volume! The two sources together present us with 30 letters showing one family's part of this momentous history.
We present transcriptions of all known letters together here with special thanks and appreciation to Stephen P. Emanuels and (via permissions by Patsy Van Kesteren and John Logan Van Kesteren) Myra Esarey Evans, the authors who previously published these documents.