Passionate Abolitionist and
Witness to the American Civil War
Passionate Abolitionist and
Witness to the American Civil War
Thomas Jackson, the main author of this collection of letters, was born in Birmingham, England in 1805 and grew up in the Midlands town of Ilkeston, where his father, John Jackson, was a rope maker. Young Thomas seems to have had only a basic state education of a working class apprentice and never had any formal higher education.
However, he clearly had a sharp mind and was a voracious reader (continuing to consume three newspapers per day as an adult). As a result, when we meet him in his later life, we find him offering critical commentary on the politics of the day and forcefully and eloquently making the case for the causes that he was passionate about, in particular the abolition of slavery.
Like many people in his time, Thomas Jackson had had to overcome many adversities in his life. In his particular case, his challenges started early and involved his own father’s political views. John Jackson openly supported the American colonies being given their independence, totally against the policies of the English King George lll and his government. As a result, his father finished up being put into prison for a year, This almost certainly lead to him going bankrupt and that in turn resulted in Thomas and his younger brother Edward sadly leaving England in 1829 hoping to build a new life in America.
In his letter of June 3, 1856, Thomas described himself as “driven by misfortune from my native country in my early manhood”. He was only 22 when he left and his brother was18.
Starting up in a totally new country was very tough and, symbolically involved them cutting trees down to build a barn to house their first business. The detailed account of how they started was later recorded in a long newspaper article.Reading Times, 1870-09-09).
We know that TJ deeply missed his old homeland and chronically wrote begging for more news from England. During this time, he clearly wrote to his relatives back in England but none of those letters remain to tell us in greater detail about his challenges in getting established in his new home. But the threads of family persisted and were kept alive by letters and these subsequently became the major channel that resulted in these first hand accounts of life that make up the basis of this collection.
Most of Thomas Jackson’s letters were directed to two of his cousins back in England. The older one was Caleb Slater and the younger one (the son of Caleb) was William Slater. They were all close both in genealogy but also geographically. The key link was TJ’s a rope-maker father, John. He, in turn, had a sister who married another rope-maker, Charles Slater and they had a son they named Caleb Slater.
Thus Thomas and Caleb were first cousins, each with parents in the rope-making business and grew up about 5 miles apart from each other. Although Caleb was the older by about 10 years, They stayed in touch throughout their lives and this relationship became the key factor leading to this collection of letters
Our current knowledge of these two men and their relatives can best be seen on the website Ancestry.com under the heading “Thomas Jackson Family Tree.
William Slater is an important link too as he travelled over to America as a young man and stayed with Thomas Jackson and his family in Reading for a few years. As a result, his letters home give us helpful details into the social and business life of Thomas Jackson.
Presumably Thomas felt closer to William than Caleb after they shared life in America for a few years so that, after William returned home, we find many of TJ’s later letters were sent to him and not his father. As a result we believe that it was William who we have to thank for collecting and assembling the collection that was passed down to us.
Among the many disappointments of TJ’s life was the fact that his wife Matilda, whom he brought over from England and was the mother of his 6 children, died unexpectedly when returning to Birmingham England where she had gone on account of health and to visit her mother and friends. In 1868 (Jan 18th) Thomas writes of being in his 62nd year and now living in a boarding house in Reading having “left my lady love in England and can’t forget.”
It is clear from his letters that Thomas Jackson was a chronically lonely man for over 30 years. He frequently wrote nostalgically about his memories of England and repeatedly expressed his wish to return there to see again all his old friends.
The only time he seems to have made it back to his homeland was in 1842 when he took his 3-year old son, Harry (Henry). Just before then, on 7th January,1841 his whole rope manufactory had been washed away by a flood and so it seems likely that he may have taken advantage of the fact that the new replacement building had not been completed by then so he went to England at a time when he was unable to carry out his business.
So news of that 1841 flood adds one more major catastrophe to the list that impacted Thomas Jackson’s life. That flood totally closed his business and caused him move a different location. However, he was faced with an even more serious one in 1850 and that is the topic of the letter that we have in our collection. 1850-09-09
Although it would have been nice to have read all of Thomas Jackson’s earlier letters back to England, it turns out that the extensive first-hand accounts that we do have cover probably the most important period in the history of America.