The Letters of Whitfield Chase

A man, a plan, a village....





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Compiled and transcribed by Robin Reid

Original transcriptions by Terrence Reid and Yvonne Parenteau

Vancouver, BC
1997

The Letters

In 1852, American Whitfield Chase set out from his home in Otego, NY to seek his fortune, leaving behind his parents and several brothers and sisters. He joined a wagon train and crossed the United States on the Oregon Trail. He spent some time in Oregon and Washington, and then continued north to Canada. He spent some time working on "Vancouver's Isle" and eventually headed north to take advantage of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Chase finally stopped his travels east of Kamloops, BC where he found a lush valley and enough land to build a ranch. That spot in the valley became the village of Chase. Whitfield's descendants still live in Chase.

A well-educated and well-rounded man, over the years Whitfield wrote sporadic letters home to his family, and many of them replied. The letters had been passed down in my family and eventually were entrusted to the Chase Museum. Just before they were handed over, I borrowed them from my father (unbeknownst to him), along with numerous type-written transcriptions which he and my cousin had accomplished over the years. I completed the transcriptions and cleaned up what had been done, adding dates and matching orphan pages. In 1997 I published several hard-cover editions of the letters and gave them to family for Christmas.

Notes on Compiling and Transcribing the Letters

Anything in italics were not in the original letters and have been added by myself for clarification. Dates were found by cross-referencing from different letters, ususally references to location, children's ages, Tempe's death, etc.
I've corrected some spelling errors. I've also added some punctuation (commas and periods) to make reading easier. Whitfield used dashes for periods, I've converted these.