| Abstract: | Studies of frontier migration in the American west are hampered by lack of data because few records contain evidence of reasons for migrating or evidence of decisions taken by individual migrants or groups of migrants. An extensive collection of letters from two English brothers who, in 1882, migrated to an English farm colony in north-west Iowa, then moved into horse-raising in Wyoming, then returned to Iowa, and later went back to Wyoming, provides an unusually illuminating case study in frontier migration. The letters reveal reasons for the frequent moves in the west over a seventeen-year period ending with the brothers' successful establishment as sheep ranchers in Wyoming. They show how each shift was conditioned by their previous experience of economic difficulties and by their persistent reliance upon contacts in England. |
