In keeping with the holiday theme this week, here is another excerpt of a letter mentioning Christmas from Mary Howard to her sister Sarah. Bridgeport January 2nd 1870 ….I should like to know how all your little ones, and big ones too, are getting along and how you enjoyed the holidays. We had a very […]

December 20, 1868 – Mary Affleck writes about 6 weeks after her sister Sarah’s visit: I think Harriet is rather more cheerful than she was when you were here, and appears to take considerable interest in proposing an entertainment to be given in the church to the children of the Sabbath School, on Christmas Eve, […]

Before antibiotics, diseases were serious – sore throats and scarlet rash (or scarlet fever) were often fatal. It is hard sometimes to read these old letters – I find myself growing fond of my ancestors, their siblings, their friends, and the friends’ families, and grieve for their losses. In December 1870, Joan Murray (a friend […]

written from Bridgeport, Ohio, July 4th 1869 “……nobody home but Dr,. Mary and myself – none of us, I believe, in a very festive mood. It don’t seem at all like the 4th of July. There was some kind of a celebration yesterday at the fairground on the Island of the “lower million” principally, I […]

In searching through records of Quaker meetings, I was surprised to find the names of Nixon and Milhaus present at meetings attended by my Howard ancestors. Today I find that the Howards were more than casually acquainted with the Milhaus family. On July 4, 1869, my 3rd-Great-Grandmother, Mary Howard Affleck, wrote to her sister, Sarah […]