Explosive growth in settlement took place in the Northwest Territory following the end of the War of 1812. Settlers came from the American seaboard and from Europe, especially England, which lost many of its middle-class farmers and artisans. One such settlement was the agricultural colony called the English Prairie, in southeastern Illinois in what is now Edwards County. Among its first settlers was a young engineer, Elias Pym Fordham, who kept journals which he sent back to England with his letters to his family. Those writings are here collected into a fascinating description of frontier...