[6] The original letters on which Mary Howitt's work was based are held in Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham in United Kingdom.

Instead of following a single unifying plot, the narrative is organized as a calendar year, with a separate chapter for each month, beginning and ending with classic scenes of emigrant Christmas.

Within this calendrical structure are incorporated numerous threads relating to domestic life (e.g. the parents' attempts at dealing with Willy's stubbornness, confrontations with a neighborhood bully, raising crops and livestock, exploring the neighboring woods) and to social issues of the day (e.g. slavery and abolition, soldiers on their way to war with Mexico, westward migration, and the practices of various religious and national groups).

[9] In extending that domestic collaboration across the Atlantic and focusing on the home of an immigrant settler, instead of on the English home more typical of Howitt's writing, Peterson argues that Our Cousins in Ohio "is based on -- indeed, seeks to extend -- certain British social, cultural, and political values, including the Howitts' Radical abolitionist views.

"[9] It has also been noted that Our Cousins in Ohio introduced dozens of American words and expressions to British readers, often earlier than any recorded instance in the Oxford English Dictionary.