Put it on Paper!

I'm a letter writer.  Always have been.  When I was away at college I kept up with a dozen different people, always managing to find time to write, even though I was working, taking 18 hours and making the dean's list.  I love the internet, don't get me wrong.  And I love the quick little note from my kids, and the long distance phone calls.  But that leaves nothing left over to write about.  Long flowing letters, where one shares one's heart -- too complicated to say over the phone, too intimate to drop into the ethernet.

One of my greatest possessions is about thirty letters from Illda's side of the family, letters saved because the writer was missed, and cherished for 100 years.  This is the only insight I have to the family members I never knew.  I was watching a little article on Youtube on how a handwriting analyst could tell you a lot about people in your family, just by the way they wrote.  Was he a powerful personality, was he sad.  Did he pay attention to detail, what was his level of education.  What are people going to take away from the 20 word emails we leave behind?

So I urge you to pick a family member and write them a letter.  Even if it's just at Christmas.  That person won't through it away.  They'll stick it somewhere safe.  In in a 100 years, someone will find it and remember you and wonder about who you were.

This is a letter that my grandmother Illda Martha Austin wrote to her gran Elizabeth "Libbie" Moore Austin.  This is one of the letters I've used to track down which Daniels and Austin Family I'm connected to.  See if you can pick out the clues:

Denver Colo
Sunday

My Dear Dear Grandma:

Your letter of recent date at hand + if I had not been so busy I would have answered sooner.  You see I have been in the dentists hands for over 2 weeks.  For more than four years my teeth have been in terrible condition + Aunt Addi knew I could not stand all those abcesses (sic) another year so she left me $25.00 to pay for them.  I go every afternoon + stay from 12 to 4 o'clock.  Then I am in my spare time making a silk dress for my sister + besides that I am trying to locate something to work at.  But can't start before my teeth are ready.  you know how badly ever since Papa died that I have wanted to be a nurse + I guess I will have to give it up.  Because you have to have a High School education + that I have not.  So I have lost quite a little time investigating into that.

I would so love to come to you + would do so only there would be no work when I got there, so what would I do?

Aunt Addie wants me to come to her but I can't think that it would be best for me to do so.

You know we have been here jut about a year + 2 weeks now.  Just before we came there was a terrible cloud burst in Houston and our house was all but demolished + what furniture we did have left we brought along.  I was buying the other furniture on time (that we were using here in Denver.)  So when I sold the furniture that was our own I got $25.00.  So now you know my financial end of the situation.

No, I am + have been (since Aunt Addie went back) been staying with friends who I don't think will take any board.  I have here for a week yesterday (Sat).  So I am not with this man or his daughter + and while dear Grandma I haven't taken you into my confidence it isn't because of anything of which I am ashamed but rather its too long a story to write at the present.  I shall have to tell you when I see you.  My mother, bless her memory, did what she did for me, not her self for to her the idea of marriage again was most repulsive.  To think then that I have been the cause of what terminated a most unhappy affair, make me more than miserable.  But I will make it up to her in the next world.  Because I know there is a world whose pleasures have not yet been tasted by the living + I know too, my mother is numbered among its people.  I have confidence too that I shall meet that weary little soul only it will be so changed.  Because for some time past I have accepted God as my Saviour + Father + now this morning when Church time comes I am about to do it publically (sic) much to the pleasure of many of my dear friends who all walk in the path of God.  So that my influence dear Grandma is the most Christian and Godly.

No I am not refusing to make a confident of you.  But just at this time I am too much shaken to go through with the details one by one which were the direct cause of mamma's death.

And I shall have to stay here until I see whether he settles mamma's bills or not.  Because if he doesn't I shall have to do so + I don't want to go until I know.

No, do write me very often dearest Grandparents because while friends are very very dear they aren't so much to us as our own relatives.

Lovingly Illda

4212 Stuart St.

What a lovely letter from Illda Martha Austin.  And I know for a fact that up to this point, Illda had only gone to school for one day.  She told me years ago that she went to school one day and that she was so traumatized that her mom didn't make her go back.