Genealogical background

In order to get a better idea of which person is writing to whom and the relationships between individuals in the Gresham correspondence, I did some genealogical research on the Negley/Gresham family.

Using a small family tree we had on hand from the Laura Burleson Negley Papers, I then looked up census records through http://www.heritagequest.com/. This helped me to work out the various children born to Susan and William Negley, these children being the authors of the majority of the letters I have processed.

We are now using the tree that I created from this research as a framework for relating individuals writing, receiving, or being mentioned in the letters to the rest of the family. While scanning the content of letters as we clean them, additional individuals and information is added to the tree.




-MCM

1900's Valentine

One interesting thing I came across while cleaning a stack of letters from 1900-1909 was this valentine sent from Gertrude at about age 9 to her brother Richard at Exeter in 1905.

Most of the letters in this batch are to Richard from his mother, Susan Negley. These were fairly clean and not too difficult to lay flat. Only a couple of letters need to be humidified. There is a bundle of letters from Richard's time at Yale to be cleaned next, tied together with some string.

Many of the letters in this collection are held together in this way, or rolled up as shown in a previous post.

-MCM

Flamingo stationery

I also found this darling flamingo stationery. I am not sure if you can tell from the photo, but the flamingos are embossed in silver and a metallic green. Gorgeous attention to detail! The flamingos pop right off the page...

--Traci

Mourning stationery

We have discovered more than a dozen letters written on mourning stationery. According to Emily Posts's Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage (1927):

Persons who are in mourning use black-eduged visiting cards, letter paper
and envelopes.  The depth of black corresponds with the depth of mourning
and the closeness of relation to the one who has gone, the width decreasing
as one's mourning lightens.  The width of black to use is a matter of
personal taste and feeling.  A very heavy border (from 3/8 to 1/2 of an
inch) announces the deeptest retirement, but these heavy borders are now
rarely used, the tendency in recent years being to avoid anything so
extreme; 1/4 of an inch is considered sufficient for deepest mourning, or
even 3/16, while 1/16 and 1/32 of an inch are suitable widths for second
mourning.

Wow! Such attention to detail. I wonder if we could follow such strict specifications for mourning e-mail.

--Traci

Letters galore

There are many, many letters in this collection, and seeing how many of them are included in a small batch can be a little overwhelming. A modest 5-inch stack can yield well over 30 letters, and we have quite a few stacks. Even in this early stage of processing, I am already thinking ahead to how we will arrange the letters when are finished cleaning and flattening them. I don't have any particular arrangement in place yet, of course, I'm really just coming up with ideas and looking at how our other collections with a large letters component were arranged. Mat is working on a family tree for this collection, so we will also have that resource to guide us when we are making decisions about the arrangement. I'm sure Mat will discuss his work on the family tree in another post.


--Traci

Letters ca.1880s

I have been cleaning letters from the 1880s. Many of these were folded, and like the rolled letters, present their own set of problems when we try to place them into folders. When paper has been folded and stored for long periods of time, it can become stiff, and when unfolded, it can be difficult to get it to lay flat because it remains bent along the fold lines (this is to varying degrees, depending on the thickness of the paper). Some of the previously folded letters will need to be placed in the humidification chamber (which is working so wonderfully for us) in order to get the paper to lay flat without forcing or putting strain it, which can lead to breakage along the folds.

Out of the 80-plus letters I've cleaned in this small bunch, only one separated along a weak fold. As we continue to process this collection, we will place this letter (and other fragile or problematic items) into clear sleeves that will secure the material while making the content available to researchers without fear of further damage.

--Traci