It's time for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. It's Week 7, and this week's prompt is to blog about any letters and diaries in the family, or the lack thereof.
My ancestors haven't been journalers or diarists of much note. One exception is my maternal great-great granduncle Major Wellman Packard of Illinois. He went along on an expedition to the gold rush in California in 1849, and wrote about it. He was there as an observer rather than a participant. His observations are interesting and insightful. Describing the "fever" generated by the news of the discovery, which took some time to reach the Midwest, Wellman Packard hit upon a key characteristic of the spread of news by word-of-mouth, received orally or in print in excitable newspaper accounts: "Now it is the nature of such news that the further it travels the bigger it gets, and the more wonderful. So that it is not strange that when the news reached us in the then border states, the size of the sand-like particles really found in that far-off, insignificant mill-race, had increased to very respectable nuggets." (1) In that fever, unfortunately, too many threw caution to the winds and set out eagerly but unprepared. ". . . very many started without the necessary preparation, and suffered the penalty of their want of foresight in much suffering and unnecessary hardship and privation." (2)
The largest collection of letters I have came from my granduncle Perry Reed and his wife Mary LeSourd. The letters span from 1906 to 1920, delineating their courtship, marriage, and family. Perry and Mary Reed adopted my mother, daughter of Perry's brother Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed, in 1920. Frank Reed had been killed in a railroad accident 20 October 1917, when my mother was not quite a year old.
My paternal grandparents both died many years before I was born, and my maternal grandmother died when I was only four years old. Perry Reed also died years before I was born. Mary LeSourd Reed was the only grandparent of any sort I ever knew.
Mary was 18 when she and Perry got married 31 October 1907. She apparently dropped out of high school to become Perry's wife, for in his letter to her dated 10 June 1907, he says: "Dearest, I don't want you to go to school next year. I know how you hate it and I tell you I wouldn't have gone a minute if I had hated it as much as you do. I know how your sister feels about it -- but she can produce no argument on my account. You told me her main argument was that I would want you to have the full benefit of a H. S. education. But, dearest, it makes no difference to me. If I ever expected to enter professional life, it might be a necessity but I never expect to do that. I do not know whether we can convince your sister and bring her around to our way of thinking or not. . . ."
Apparently, Mary decided to drop out and marry Perry, for two paragraphs later in this letter, he writes: "That idea of having to wait two years worried me greatly -- and I have told you so; and I don't believe I have ever heard any better news than when you told me it would not be necessary to wait that long. You say the matter rested with me. Why not make it shorter yet -- say six or seven months? . . . " It turned out to be just four more months of waiting, as they were married 31 October of that year. (3)
These letters maintain throughout the years the florid and highly romanticized expressions of love, affection, and yearning typical of the Victorian era. Their effusive statements of affection grow to include their children, Robert and Elizabeth, and later, Martha after her adoption.
(1) Major Wellman Packard, Early Emigration to California, 1849-1850. (Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, Limited Edition Reprint, 1971.), page 1. [Copy of No. 229 of a limited run of 500, sent to me by a cousin.]
(2). Ibid.
(3) Letter from Perry Reed to Mary LeSourd, 10 June 1907. Papers of M. K. and K. L. Rhodes. ["next year" in the underlined sentence probably referred to the next school year, which would have begin in late August or early September.]
No comments:
Post a Comment