The Filson Historical Society Blog

The staff of the Special Collections department reveals some of their

sentimental favorites from The Filson’s collection in honor of Valentine’s Day.

 

~Ellen Bodley and $50 of Love~

While searching for Valentine’s Day related material in the Filson’s Special Collections, this particular item caught my fancy due to its humorous and somewhat sarcastic tone. In a letter to her brother William Bodley dated 5 March 1855, Ellen Bodley described a surprise Valentine she received while out of town.

“I must tell you about my valentines…sister Maria opened it and thought it was a $50 bank note brother Harry had sent me, but on examining it more closely, it was the State of Matrimony, the Bank of Love, fifty years of devotion (I would prefer the money) of a true and faithful heart on acceptance.”

Despite her lack of sentimentality in this letter, love had not given up on Ellen (who at over 30 years of age was probably considered a spinster): according to the records, Ellen married George H. Gill in St. Louis on 13 April 1857.

~Jennie Cole, Associate Curator of Special Collections

 

~Valentine Cards from the Bullitt Collection~

Although Valentines have been around since the Middle Ages, when lovers more than likely sang or said their valentines, manufactured cards did not come on the scene until the late 19^thcentury.  Since then the practice of sending Valentines has taken off.  Americans do like to express their love for one another.  So much so that Valentine’s Day is now second only to Christmas as the Holiday when most cards are sent. These two Valentines are from the Bullitt family papers and were sent to a young Tommy Bullitt in 1929. 

~Shirley Harmon, Associate Curator of Special Collections

 

~John “Romeo” Thompson~

Letter writers of the 18^th and early 19^th centuries didn’t typically write passionate love letters – at least many that survive. Their letters tended to be rather formal and circumspect in any proclamations of love. An exception to this is John Thompson. Born in Virginia in 1764 he married Elizabeth “Betsy” Housion (ca. 1768) on February 15, 1784, just missing a day that suited him so well. In their courtship, and whenever separated from her, he faithfully writes of his love and affection for her. A surviving letter written during their courtship serves as a wonderful example:

My Dear Miss Betsy,

Were you acquainted with the Tumult of my soul, the agonizing Torments your Absence occasions me to suffer, you’d pity my distress, and render me some relief, since from you alone it is in my Power to obtain it. . . . What hope of Happiness have I now left, what flattering reflections to sooth [sic] my troubled Breast, but your Constancy, Generosity and Fidelity.  Remember the Vows you have given me, my Love, my Sufferings, the great Probability of an eternal Seperation [sic] without your Exertions?  Consider your own Happiness, the Ease with which you may obtain it; &you must, “it is impossible you can avoid it” you must consent and be mine forever, throw off every appearance of reserve, tell me the Secrets of your Soul, drive away each Thought of doubt and make me blest in blessing you.  I declare to you “my dear Miss Betsy” I call Heavens to witness, I never deceiv’d you, that I have told you every Circumstance concerning me, & I swear to you again that what you have heard is base, false & malicious.  If it’s in my Power to make you happy, if I am the Person you would chose to marry, you may entrust yourself with Safety to my Care, & nothing in my Power shall be ever wanting to make you forever & compleatly [sic] blest. . . . Reflect, “Oh lovely Maid,” reflect on what I feel, bless me once more with your deluding Smiles & if I am to die then will I die content.  I am My Dr Miss Betsy Your unhappy Lover John Thompson April 29, 1783″

“Die” John Thompson did. After moving to Kentucky in the mid-1790s and settling just outside Louisville on a farm along present Brownsboro Road in Crescent Hill, John left his family in August of 1805 to serve as a territorial official in Louisiana. He never saw his beloved Betsy again. His letters are full of his protestations of love and longing but she refused to move to Louisiana and he never returned home, not even for a visit. In January 1810 Thompson suffered a mental breakdown and killed himself. Despair over believing he’d lost the love of his life – like the ill-fated Romeo and Juliet – was certainly a contributing factor.

~James J. Holmberg, Curator of Special Collections

~A Undying Affection~

There is always a sense of intruding when reading someone else’s letters.  Never is this more apparent than when reading their love letters.  But please, don’t call me a snoop, I’m an archivist!  It’s my job to catalog and preserve the lives of others.   Most correspondence is fascinating and it is truly difficult to not get sucked into the lives of others, nevertheless select letters are more arresting than others. I encountered one such letter recently while helping a researcher and was immediately moved by its tenderness.

The letter was written by a young Simon Bolivar Buckner to his sweetheart (and later wife) Mary Jean Kingsbury.  The romantic sentiment and respect expressed in his short letter is almost tangible. At the time, Buckner was 24 years old and a soldier in the Mexican-American War (Buckner went on to have a career as a business man, Civil War General, and Governor of Kentucky).  On 15 August 1847, he dashed off a short note  from Chalco, Mexico to his beloved Mary Jean while facing an impending battle.  I imagine him quickly penning these words, with growing anxiety, as he approached battle, then slipping the letter into his pocket.  Should he fall in battle, the note, with his last message, would be retrieved from his person and delivered to Mary Jean.

My “best friend,”  We move in a few hours to attack the enemy’s works.  If I fall, believe that I remained until death, with fondest affection, Your “best friend,” S. Bolivar Buckner

166 years later as I hold his letter to Mary Jean, I feel downright swoony.  What a rush of emotions he must have felt writing this message to his Love, contemplating his mortality!  How her heart must have swelled to receive this and to know that her ‘best friend’ and Love was thinking of her at such a vulnerable moment!

Buckner and Kingsbury were married in 1850 at her aunt’s home in Old Lyme, CT and in 1858 had a daughter, Lily.  The Filson’s ‘Simon Bolivar Buckner miscellaneous papers’ contain many compelling letters that document their deep friendship and romantic courtship.

~Sarah-Jane Poindexter, Associate Curator of Special Collections

 

~Major General Elliott Warren Rice and Marion Harlan Lincoln~

Marion Eunice Harlan Lincoln - The Elliott Warren Rice Collection

While recently cataloging a small collection of photographs belonging to Civil War Major General Elliott Warren Rice, I encountered a faded carte de visite of a woman.  Although in relatively good condition, the CDV was creased and exhibited two or three very tiny holes.  The photograph had without a doubt suffered some wear over the last 150+ years, but had none the less been lovingly preserved.  Examining the back of the photo for identifying text, I read “Marion Harlan Lincoln, carried through the war by General E. W. Rice.”  As I continued to look at the photo, I was incredibly moved by the idea of General Rice carrying Marion Harlan’s image all throughout the dark days of the war.  The years seemed to fall away as I imagined Marion giving her likeness to Eliott, and what that might have meant to him….what comfort it may have given him in the difficult times ahead.

I have found nothing to indicate the nature of the relationship between Marion and Elliott, other than a note on the back of a CDV of Rose Mitchell in the same collection.   Mitchell was a “…cousin of Mrs. R. Lincoln,”  and the note further states, “… Mrs.Robt. Lincoln and Miss Rose Mitchell were friends of General E. W. Rice.”  However, we do know that in 1868, Marion Harlan married Robert Todd Lincoln, oldest son of President Abraham Lincoln.  Brevetted Major General for war service on March 13, 1865, Rice  mustered out of Federal service on August 24th, having been wounded 7 times in 4 years.  After the war he practiced law in Washington D.C., until retiring in poor health to his sister’s home in Sioux City, Iowa in 1885, where he died.

~Robin Wallace, Associate Curator of Special Collections

 

 

- All images from the George Perkins photo collection

 

 

The recent federal holiday marking the birthday of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has continued to inspire many to consider the idea of equality and justice for all citizens. Personally, I noticed many facebook statuses on Monday quoting the Reverend’s words, the most popular quote being “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” This prompted me to look through our library collection to see what we might have in terms of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy. I found an interesting pamphlet which was transcribed from a lecture delivered in 1982 by Stephen B. Oates in Fort Wayne, Indiana entitled “Builders of the Dream: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.” Oates’s lecture focused on the juxtaposition of these two leaders who lived a century apart yet embodied the same basic vision of equality for all. Although we have come a long way since 1968, there are still many issues with regard to true equality in play and we will always look to passionate leaders to help guide us. The last paragraph of Oates’s lecture is as follows…

From a 1982 Pamphlet by Stephen B. Oates

In the end, King fell in Memphis, Tennessee, a victim of the same conflict that had claimed

Lincoln’s life in another April long before. Perhaps assassination is what happens to passionate, spiritual, driven figures like them and Mahatma Ghandi; in their efforts to build a temple for the forces of light, they stir up too much evil, too much hatred. Yet we need not despair, for our lives—our country and our world—are immeasurably enriched because of what they saw, said, and did. Their words and deeds are permanent monuments; through them Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King have never died. They never will.

This pamphlet is available to view in full here in the library on the second floor of the Filson Historical Society.

As we pull up to the end of another year, I can’t help but feeling that time is moving more quickly. How can 2010 be over?  I’m not ready to face 2011!  So many things weren’t accomplished this past year, or weren’t accomplished the way I had hoped….  Case in point, this blog post – it probably should have been written and reviewed last week, but I’m frantically typing last minute to get it up on schedule.

Yesterday, Special Collections department staff members were brainstorming ideas about a New Year’s blog, all trying to remember past collections we had processed or worked with that might have described holiday celebrations, New Year’s traditions, or included some sort of card or note we could display showing the holidays.

Out of the blue, I had a memory of a letter written by James Speed, United States Attorney General, to his mother, Lucy Gilmer Fry Speed, for New Year’s Day. (Speed was the topic of my history master’s thesis from the University of Louisville, so I really poured over those letters.) I remembered Speed talking about a New Year’s tradition his mother had taught him, regarding critiquing one’s activities of the past year.

I went down to the stacks and found the letter:

Washington, December 31, 1865

Dear Mother:

This is the last Sunday in the year; if obedient to your precepts & practice, I would run over the things done wrong and the duties omitted, that I might be better able in the coming year to do more and fail less.  I am so situated, however, that pressing duties of the hour are of such moment to the future, that I have but little time and little inclination to turn my eyes backward –

“Let the dead bury the dead.”  Great questions and great events of great moment to the country & to mankind, and with the shaping of which I have more or less to do, so crowd upon one another, that there is no time for stately & solemn funerals over the dead past. On we must go, and it would be as silly to go forward in the dark with lantern behind, as to be thinking & dreaming of the past just now.

Then “let the dead bury the dead” I am in for the new year and nerved to the work it brings & ever hopeful that an honest and intelligent discharge of duty will, under God, yield pleasant and healthful fruit.

As the whirlwind of holidays and year-end tasks threatened to overwhelm me, I’m going to take a few minutes and think about Speed’s decision to keep the past in the past.  The year 1865 had been a momentous one for Speed – he joined Abraham Lincoln’s second cabinet as Attorney General; he stood with Lincoln, his brother’s closest friend, as the bloody Civil War came to an end; he stood by Lincoln’s deathbed, and began the prosecution of those who conspired to assassinate him; he butted heads with the new President, Andrew Johnson, over policies and practices.  On a daily basis, he was overwhelmed with an onslaught of work that was atypical to his former lifestyle as a Louisville lawyer.  While I certainly cannot equate my life changes in 2010 to Speed’s in 1865, I can empathize with the need to focus on the present and the future.  Therefore, as Speed wrote, “I am in for the new year”!

Happy New Year from your friends at The Filson!

A recent email to my mother regarding some gift possibilities for Christmas led her to reminisce about the “good old days” when my sister and I penned letters to St. Nick, detailing how we had been good girls for the past year and requesting certain items as presents for Christmas.  The letters were carefully deposited on the family room coffee table on the eve of St. Nicholas’s feast day, the 6^th of December, along with a small treat of some sort.  St. Nick always left us a kind note along with a bowl of candies and fruit (no stockings/shoes were filled in our household).  More often than not, many of the presents we requested were under the tree for us on Christmas day (although I never did get the Optimus Prime Transformer toy that I had so desperately wanted…).

This conversation led me to wonder if my friend’s children were engaging in similar compositional pursuits.  It turns out that today, children can actually email Santa – a quick web search provided me with a free site for emailing Santa Claus: http://www.emailsanta.com/, as well as a vehicle for Santa to write back: http://www.freelettersfromsantaclaus.com.  For those who prefer more traditional “snail mail” service, the United States Postal Service informs me that one can get an actual response postmarked from the North Pole.

The Postal Service’s website informs readers that Post Office locations began receiving letters to Santa “over 100 years ago,” but I found evidence here at The Filson that such letters began even earlier.  The Jesup-Sitgreaves Family Papers collection includes correspondence from a young Mary Jesup Sitgreaves.  Mary’s father was Lorenzo Sitgreaves, an Army captain who fought in the Mexican War and was later employed as an Army engineer and surveyor; Mary’s mother was Lucy Ann Jesop, a granddaughter of Lucy Clark and William Croghan, original residents of Locust Grove.  Mary Jesup Sitgreaves was born and grew up in Washington, D.C.

On 18 December, 1863, at the age of five years and one month, Mary, using what I am sure what her best handwriting, penned a letter to“Mr. Kriss Kinkle” [sic].

Mary writes,

“dear old kriss will you bring me a stove and a baby and a desk with paper and a pen and a paper knife in it please send me some sugar plums too and cakes and I will love you mary J. Sitgreaves dec. 18^th 1863”

The collection does not indicate whether or not little Mary received her presents, although the above photo of her suggests that she perhaps received the requested “baby.”

Happy Christmas to all from The Filson!