This short letter does not do justice to the enormity of the damage from this “freshet” flood.

This second major calamity again washed away all the years Thomas Jackson had been working to build his business in his new homeland. The Ambassadors think it likely that at this time, he was simply exhausted at facing the prospect of starting out from the ground up once again.  Thus here he simply registered the magnitude of the event for his English relatives to understand as he started to work out where he should move to next so he could begin all over again.

To get a feel for the extent of the devastation to so many businesses, residences and families that lived near the river in the city of Reading, PA on that date, it is necessary to read the report in the Reading Gazette and Democrat for 09-09-1850. There you will find page after page of reports detailing the fates of over a hundred specific structures and individuals

Among them, almost lost in the sea of others, we read,  “Thomas Jackson’s rope-walks and storehouse were nearly all washed away, with great quantity of hemp and ropes. Loss $3000.”

So this short TJ letter that is the earliest in our collection in reality is just one more incident in the host of challenges that Thomas Jackson had had to overcome in his first few decades in America.

TJ’s Comments on looking back on these events. 

These two floods were referred to later in TJ’s letter of Aug 8, 1863 as follows:

“When I came to Reading I happened to locate too near the Schuylkill river. On the 7th Jany 1841 my rope-walk was washed away by a flood. I then built another and a larger one on ground 6 feet higher and thought I was safe. But on the 2nd of Septr 1850 the river rose 8 feet higher than any white man had ever known it rise before, and my whole ropewalk went again.”

All the rivers that Thomas Jackson would have known in England would never have risen more than a couple of feet so this sort of massive flooding would be something he never had planned for when locating his first business.

However, in response to being wiped out twice by floods, TJ next moved well away from the river and for his third location, he established a larger steam-powered cordage manufactury next to the railroad terminal.

But that was not the end of his challenges.  There were a least three major fires at his new premises, at least two of them were probably arson motivated by the dislike that many locals felt for TJ’s strident abolitionist views.

So these were just some of the troubles that Thomas Jackson had to endure as he continued to push for abolition and fight for what he knew should be “America the Beautiful”