The Lost Art of Letter Writing

How wonderful it is to live in the technologically-advanced twenty-first century, with email, texting, and instant digital communication. It's comforting to be able to contact friends and relatives on the other side of the world and receive an immediate response. Our pioneer ancestors would have appreciated the convenience, not to mention the prompt reassurance that loved ones were alive and prosperous, though they might never see them again.

And yet, there's something charming about handwritten words. For those of us who have piles of old family letters, there's nothing like curling up and perusing them. The letters my relatives saved tell me about their lives and the world in which they lived and struggled. I often feel like I know those people who died decades, even more than a century, before I was born. 

Take the letter my great, great grandmother, Jane "Jennet" Moore, wrote home to her parents in Ireland, on July 12, 1847. It was a great help for compiling our family history. Jennet writes her parents that she now has five children, William, James, Robert, Eliza Jane, and John:

Of course, family historians have lots of ways to find the names of their relatives these days. Ancestry and other genealogy websites speedily grow family trees. But it certainly saved us time to have Jennet record the names of her children. What we didn't know for many years was that she had three children after this letter was written - three more boys, in fact. That's where census records came in handy.

From the address label we learned the name of her father, James Richie, and where she came from, Larne, County of Antrim, Ireland. The postmark is for Oxford County, Upper Canada (U.C.), although the province was officially Canada West by that date. 

Jennet's return address appears at the end of her letter, informing her family that they can reply to her at Ingersollville, Oxford, Brock District, Canada West, N.A.

Whether it was common to call Ingersoll "Ingersollville" at that time or whether that was a Jennet-ism I don't know. The hamlet was not even officially a village until 1852, so perhaps she could call it whatever she liked. As for Brock District, it was created in 1839 from the London District but abolished in 1849. 

Jennet's letter home may have been prompted by news of suffering in her homeland. Since she and her husband John had left Ireland in the late 1830s, conditions there had deteriorated. In 1847, the year remembered as "Black '47," the Great Famine was at its worst. "We are sorry to hear of the distress in Ireland," Jennet writes.* "We hope that none of our friends are suffering under it. We hear bad accounts from the south of Ireland." The accounts she'd heard were correct; the west and south of Ireland were the worst hit. 

But Jennet could report that her husband had a good-paying job and she urged a relative to join them. "We had a letter from Robert Moore. He thinks of coming to this country ... he could do better here ... John has wrote to him ... John is serving a time in the iron foundry. He can do well by it. When he serves one year he can get a dollar and a half a day." (I haven't calculated that daily wage into today's currency but would be pleased to learn how.)

John and Jennet eventually moved to St. Marys where John operated an iron foundry. They died in 1895 and 1855 respectively and are buried in St. Marys. The kids mentioned in the letter grew up and did their own thing. William became Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Canada; James and Robert, my great grandfather, became hardware dealers; Eliza became an overseas missionary; John went off to South Africa. 

Robert married my great grandmother, Fanny Clarke, in 1882, but not before sending this charming love letter from his home in St. Marys to hers in Ingersoll on May 15:

"I will be glad to drive over to Woodstock with you on Sunday. You think four or five weeks a long time between my visits. I assure you I do too. I would like to go oftener but it is so inconvenient getting back & forth that it is hardly possible.

My Dear Fanny the months will soon wear by and then we will be together all the time. I will be glad when that times comes for I do love you and am sure you love me so that I expect we will be very happy together.

I have no fear of getting my eyes opened the way you speak of (jokingly of course). I believe it will be just the opposite. The more I know of you the more I will love you and I hope it will be the same with you toward me." 

Robert and Fanny were married in Ingersoll on November 9, 1882, the ceremony being performed by his brother, Rev. Will. They remained together until Robert's death in 1910, I hope as lovingly as he anticipated. They had two daughters, my grandmother, Helen, and Kathleen.

The girls, of course, became letter writers themselves, even at an early age. When Robert was away on business, he could expect an in-depth report on everything going on at home, including the activities of family pets like "Caesar" and "Jack." This letter is from his younger daughter, Kathleen, who had yet to perfect her calligraphy skills. A note at the bottom from Fanny explains that "Helen is busy reading," in case Robert wondered why there was no note from his older daughter. She did write at times, however, because we have letters from her too. 

When she was 11, in 1901, Kathleen helped herself to Papa's company letterhead to comment on the recent letter he'd sent home to his business partner, Mr. Browne. Fanny had read aloud the letter Robert had sent to "Mr. B." Here Kathleen comments on Robert's ride in one of those newfangled automobiles: "I was wishing that I was there to have a ride in a horseless carriage." Naturally! What could be more exciting to a turn-of-the-twentieth-century child? Well, maybe a glimpse of royalty. "Did you see the Duke and Duchess?" she continues. "What did they look like?"

The couple in question were the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, later King George V and Queen Mary, who visited Canada in the autumn of 1901. Their visit lasted five weeks but where Robert was so that he might have waved at them we don't know. His letter was probably returned to Mr. B.

After Robert's death in 1910, and my grandmother's marriage to my grandfather in 1911, Fanny and Kathleen decided to see Europe. Unfortunately, their timing couldn't have been worse, sailing overseas in the summer of 1914. Although they did enjoy a tour of Britain, they never made it to the Continent. In this letter of August 5, mailed to a London hotel, Helen tries to contain her panic: "Where are you and what are you doing? Have you been attacked yet or sent home or what? We hear such terrible rumors of war and I am so glad it has broken out before you got over to France. It might have been so terrible if you had got over there & couldn't get back." Only the day before, Germany had invaded Belgium and George V had declared war on Germany for its violation of Belgian neutrality. World War I was about to begin. 

We also have various letters soldiers wrote to their friend Kathleen, thanking her for the "sox" she'd knitted them, and asking after friends in Canada. There's never any mention of  battles, attacks, or the horrors of the trenches. As her friend, Elliott points out in the excerpt below, "anything interesting would not pass the censor."

But in another note from that same year, Elliott states: "Remember me to Jack and tell him I said this death or glory stuff is not what it's cracked up to be." That message was for my grandfather, Helen's husband, who was in the military but didn't leave Canada. It may be among the great understatements of all time. Perhaps it was Elliott's way of saying "Be grateful you're home."

Elliott, by the way, was Lt. Elliott Manery Durham of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, who enlisted at Sault Ste. Marie in August 1914, aged about 22. Information about him and other WWI personnel may be obtained here. 

And envelopes can be interesting too:

The letter inside this envelope is nothing remarkable, just a note from Fanny to her niece, Sadie, letting her know about her upcoming trip to Britain and hoping she and Kathleen can visit. But the letter was carried on the S. S. Empress of Ireland, a Canadian Pacific Liner that sank off the Gaspé Peninsula on May 29 of that year. The Empress took only fourteen minutes to sink after colliding with a freighter in the fog. 1,012 people drowned in the worst marine disaster in Canadian history. 

Since the ship sank in relatively shallow water and was apparently carrying about £200,000 of silver bullion, the insurance underwriters decided to conduct salvage operations. Much of the mail the ship carried was recovered, dried out and hand-stamped "Recovered by divers from wreck of S. S. Empress of Ireland." The postage stamp is missing; it would have fallen off when immersed in water. 

I don't have letters from every branch of my family, but Kathleen was one of those sentimental savers who hung on to letters, postcards, and photos. Most of them she kept in her portable writing desk. As a child, I liked to take this box off the shelf, place it on my knee and have a good rummage through it, reading the letters and looking at the old photos. 

This isn't the proper way to store archival material of course. Old letters should be placed in acid-free envelopes, archival crystal clear bags, or three-ring page protectors, all of which will keep delicate paper from being exposed to harmful dust, moisture or pollutants. In defense of my family's preservation efforts, though, I can confirm that some material, such as Jennet's letter, has indeed been removed from the desk and protected in proper archival fashion. The rest of it I need to work on ...

So the next time you're thinking about emailing someone, consider sending a handwritten letter instead. Your email may be read and forgotten, perhaps not read at all. But there's nothing like a letter delivered by "snail mail" to get people's attention. It's personal and charming. And, since it takes more time and effort, a letter or card shows you care enough about the recipient to write. 

But, best of all, if your letter is saved, future folks will learn all about you and your life in 2021. Your efforts will be appreciated by future historians, genealogists, and kids who like to "rummage." 

* I have modernized the spelling and grammar in all excerpts.