Corresponding with the past

In the process of sorting this week - yes, I still have a bookcase that is almost full of notebooks - I came across a collection of letters written to and from Lou.  None of them was particularly remarkable, and it was a hodgepodge group of authors and dates.  Most of them contained nothing more than a summary of daily activities, highlights of trips taken, or thanks for a gift received, but I was drawn to them in spite of, or maybe because of, their ordinary contents.

A hand written letter is becoming a memory of the past.  In this era of email, instant messages, webcams, and cell phones with unlimited minutes, the idea of writing ones thoughts on paper and mailing it to another person is all but obsolete.  But letters offer an insight to family history that is different from more formal writings.  Sharing routine details about daily life, personal letters allow us to vicariously experience life in a different time and place.  It's hard to imagine a time when a radio would have been an exciting purchase, but it 1941 it was certainly newsworthy.

"Did I ever write and tell you we traded in our old Radio and paid in the money Harker gave me on a new R.C.A. Victor?  Well I did and we do enjoy it so much and it makes a nice remembrance of him, too.  He said what was left to use for something for myself and the children that were home and we decided we would rather have a radio than anything else for our old one was completely worn out and we enjoy a radio so much.  I wanted you to know what we used it for."

 to Mable and family

from Aunt Lorena (Harker's half sister)

January 5, 1941

I've posted before about the Davis family Round Robin letters and recently got this information from Donna Mae Bagby (Lou's cousin) about its origin.

"You asked when the Robin was started.  Uncle Norman started it in the l940's sometime to go to his brothers and sisters (13 of them).  It has gotten lost quite a few times and we have had to restart it but hopefully it will continue.  All of the siblings are gone now so is a cousins' round robin and many, like you had not read it until after their parent passed away so is quite new to many but thankful so many are interested and willing to keep it going.  Thanks to my mother - she laboriously typed off the letters on a manual typewriter starting with Don and My marriage in 1951 and I have all those copies and am trying to get them bound in booklets for our daughter Pamela who will keep them."

So this year I'm going to focus on letters, posting excerpts from Lou's large collection.  His grandparents, brothers, sons, and other assorted family members are represented in the letters, and I'm hoping we can get a glimpse into history as well as the not so distant past.