A letter to their british relatives from migrants who had settled ‘over the water’, caused much amusement to inhabitants of the fens. The relatives had moved to a lead mining settlement located in Wisconsin.
- “With our Grandmothers in the Fen Villages, ‘over the water’ meant the opposite shores of the river Welland : as civilisation advanced, ‘other side of the water’ implied the opposite of Fosdyke wash : an anxious mother at Moulton this week says, she has just heard from her daughter ‘over the water,’ meaning the Atlantic ocean. The letter is dated from the Blackleg Diggins, Wisconsin, and it states that emigrants are doing well there, though all had been seized with the gold fever, and large companies were continually venturing from Wisconsin across the yet unexplored continent of America. The letter is addressed to a poor woman named Marriott: its off-hand style is amusing: as for instance, ‘We have sold the smithey, and are going to Californy : we shall pass through tracts where the inhabitants wear no clothes, and live in holes in the earth like rabbits. We have to be armed with daggers and pistols.'”
The Stamford Mercury, 3rd May, 1850.