This project was completed during January, 2007 for Professor Holly Allen’s American Studies Web Museum. While the class as a whole focused on American travel to Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries, our project focused specifically on the travel journal of Charles Barstow, an intelligent and cultured traveler from New York. One objective of the project was to digitize the full journal for Middlebury College Special Collections. This website displays selected scans and transcriptions from Barstow's letters.

Through his trip, Barstow gained vast experience and knowledge of the world around him. The change in Barstow's worldview can be seen through changes in his writing. European travel at the time was often used to reconfirm the traveler's social status at home in America. While Barstow was an upper-class traveler, his writings also described the laboring classes in Europe and are written in a manner that would be accessible to members of the working class at home in America.

We hope that this website will allow viewers to experience Europe through the letters of Charles Barstow.