A Letter Saved from 1840

Poking around an antiques show today in the small borough of East Berlin in southern Pennsylvania, I found a letter amid the saved treasures of long ago. The letter was addressed to Elizabeth in Boston, and that it was to be hand delivered by a Mr. Nichols was neatly written on the front, which was part of the back page of the letter itself. There was no envelope.  

Generations of the family had come and gone and this letter had been preserved and kept safely, but now it was for sale.  The thick, creamy paper is still supple, with just some small discoloration and disintegration along an edge. The letter was written by Susan Nichols to My Dearest Sister Elizabeth, 169 years ago. 

Susan's penmanship was the American Round style of that day, and the ink is now faded to a light brown.  She wrote with a fine line, and her words were most small and as delicate as spider silk. An exhaled breath could seem to blow them off the paper. The letter was long and after I accustomed myself to the faint ink and the penmanship of another time, I stood and read it--it took 20 minutes--and could not put it down. I ached with sorrow as I read, for you see, Susan was writing to the one person in the world, she said, to whom she could confide her grief over the death of her little daughter.  She knew her sister would understand, so lately having her own daughter so near the grave's door.  That little one was spared, but Susan's child was not.  Susan's own dear husband, Mr. Nichols, was no longer himself, for he had loved the little girl so.  Little Marie was her father's darling, and now the days for both parents were full of deepest grief that nothing could assuage.

Susan wrote on and her description of her sorrow was spent by the back of the paper.  She wrote about the neighbors, and the people of the church, and she asked to be remembered to her sister's children.  After vowing to visit soon, she wrote loving words of farewell.  She folded the letter but did not seal it, handed it to her husband, and bade him deliver it to her sister during his travels. He, being a gentleman of full courtesy, would not have read this letter between sisters.

The letter is real, and reading it, time dissolved.  I hope she achieved a measure of peace.

Comments

[Troy]

Despite all the technology surrounding us, books (or printed material, in general) will never be obsolete because we have an emotional attachment to words written by someone's own hand. We will never get that same feeling from words on a computer screen.

[Ann]

I'll post a photo of the letter, and maybe transcribe some of it in a couple of days. Presently, the letter is out of my hands, but it will return shortly.

[Craig]

Makes me want to find out what happened to Susan Nichols and her husband. If they did manage to find peace in a time when infant mortality was still quite high.