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After the American victory in the Mexican War of 1846-48, Major William Chapman was put in charge of building Fort Brown across the Rio Grande from Matamoros in the recently annexed state of Texas. His wife Helen sailed from New York and joined him in January 1848. She marked her journey by letters to her mother in New England, first describing the voyage by ship and the arrival in her new home, then, over a span of five years, the life and times of the colorful and often unstable new border between the US and Mexico.
Helen Chapman and her son Willie, ca. 1846. Courtesy of Mabel Freeman Coker.
