evergreen trees of any kind. He and Mathew were assigned berths
but, when crossing the Susquehanna River by aqueduct one night/
he got up to watch and when he returned found his berth "occupied
by one who I suppose was in more need than myself so I had to
content myself by sitting up the rest of the night."
Traveling beside the Juniata River through mountainous country,
he comments that the height of the mountains appears nearly equal
"to those high ones on the Battenkill. All who have traveled
from Watervliet to Enfield, NH will understand all about it."
Again he complains that since there were about 90 passengers on
board "and our boat, being some narrower than those on the Erie
Canall, makes crowding worse at the tables as well as lodgings.
Only 24 can sit at the tables at once so we have 4 settings which
take two hours. We have only two meals a day, breakfast at 7:30
and dinner at 4. Only rooms for 10 berths in the cabin, 3 high,
with allies between, tor room for 30$, male passengers but that
is only enough for about half of the men. Accordingly about half
go to bed until 1 am and then get up and let the rest lie down."
Finally they reached Pittsburgh on Thursday and went on board a
steamboat where he exults "we have a stateroom with two berths to
ourselves. If we want to leave our room at any time we can lock
the door and put the key in our pocket." The next day they
arrive in Wheeling, West Virginia, "a village perhaps as large or
larger than Waterford, NY but as black as Pittsburgh. "It is
wonderful to see the blackness and darkness that pervades these
cities whose only fuel for their fires is coal. I think I never
saw the smoke of tar or fat pine equal it in density. And such a
body of blackness issuing from every chimney in the village and
settling down upon all the buildings and on everything that is
not enclosed in buildings causes a very disagreeable appearance
as well as smell. On iny part I shall number Pittsburgh and
Wheeling as those places in which I have no desire to live."

They reached Cincinnati on Tuesday and booked onto a packet boat
on the Dayton Canal, arriving at Dickeys Basin, 8 miles from
Union Village about 9:30 pm, so they put up for the night. They
rented a team the next morning and finally arrived on Wednesday,
26 Aprilth, having been on the way two weeks.
The next day Freegift was officially appointed first elder
at Union Village, and remained alone in this position until June
25, 1839. Marguerite Melcher says New Lebanon had asked Richard
McNemar to be the lead elder but he had declined, feeling that
his duties would call him away too much to the other western
Shaker communities. So Freegift was a second choice. But appa-
rently Union Village had already reached the peak of its influ-
ence and prosperity and "the leadership of Freegift marked the
beginning of the long, slow decline" in Melcher's words.
There was also apparently a personality conflict between McNemar
and Freegift, as there often is between two people with leader-
ship ability. Melcher however describes Freegift as "a man of