author
Tilly Buttrick
1783–1859
A restless early American traveler turns hard miles and rough luck into a lively firsthand adventure. His brief memoir follows journeys across the Atlantic and through the young United States, with the plainspoken feel of someone who truly lived it.
1 Audiobook
Buttrick's voyages, 1812-1819; Evans's Pedestrious tour, 1818
by Tilly Buttrick, Estwick Evans
About the author
Born in Westford, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1783, Tilly Buttrick was an early American traveler and memoirist who later published a short account of his experiences. His best-known work, Voyages, Travels and Discoveries of Tilly Buttrick, Jr., was printed in Boston in 1831.
In that book, he looks back on travels from 1812 to 1819, including an Atlantic voyage and journeys through parts of the United States at a time when long-distance travel was slow, uncertain, and often dangerous. The appeal of his writing is its directness: it reads less like polished literature and more like a compact personal record of movement, survival, and curiosity.
Little widely documented biographical information about Buttrick appears to be readily available beyond the details preserved in his own book and library records. Even so, his work offers a small but vivid window into everyday travel and adventure in the early nineteenth century.