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Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Transcribing a letter from 4th-Great-Grandfather Horton Howard in Nov 1831, and find he was a man with complex and universal compassions. One letter, written on travells through VA & SC etc, includes the following, which seemed contradictory to his antislavery/abolitionist stance “they are determined to remove to one of the Free Western States as soon…
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From Sympathy to Romance
I am working on 1804 letters written by my 4th-Great-Grandmother to Horton Howard, the man she married in 1806. I believe their romance began when she wrote him a sympathy letter on the death of his second wife. There were several other letters written before the second wife died. I can’t help wonder if this…
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A father’s loss
I have transcribed 37 of the letters I photographed in Dayton. This morning I worked on a few short ones. My 3rd-Great-Grandmother’s brother-in-law was an engineer on the Miami-Erie and other canals, hence away from home much of the time. In early 1837 his youngest child died. Then, in late 1838, this was sent to…
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wishing for “happily ever after”
The past two weeks have been full of successful research. Last week I read bits and pieces at the Dayton Metro Library, while photographing 100s of letters. This week I sat and transcribed letters sent home from the war. While working I have gasped in amazement, had “aha” moments when I found missing “pieces of…
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His Sorrowing Mother
Yesterday I spent 4 hours at the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, transcribing a journal in which my 3rd-Great-Grandmother transcribed the letters written by her son Howard Gladstone Affleck while serving in the Union Army. His last letter was to inform his mother that he’d been injured. A musket ball in his knee led…