Name/Title
Frances Hope Leavitt to her cousin BobEntry/Object ID
003769Tags
Frances Hope LeavittScope and Content
These pages form a single, continuous multi-page letter from Frances Hope Leavitt to her cousin Bob, dated August 21, 1909.
Though written on two different paper types (a smaller, tan/cream stationery set in dark borders and larger, wide light blue/gray stationery sheets), the narrative flows directly from page to page.
Complete Transcription (In Reading Order)
Page 1 (3769.full.jpg)
Liberty, New York.
My dear Bob,
It was very good to have news of you again in such a nice letter. I had no idea your mother had been sick and I am very sorry. But it is fine she is well again. From what you tell me I should think it was a most remarkable cure. To think of electricity working such wonders. I am glad, too, that Eleanor has given
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up teaching. I never liked to think of her doing it, because I felt, though she never said so, that she couldn't like it. Stenography I should think would be easier and better pay. Please send them both my love and tell them I hope to see them sometime.
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Your news of Miss Jemima's will gave me a great deal of pleasure. We all always felt that Cousin Richard treated you very shabbily, and I am more than thankful that Miss Jemima remembered you. I should consider it quite an honor, she made life-
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enter, too, if I were as young as you. She evidently thought you had sense. Are you sure she died in May? Think it must have been in June, for we did not get the announcements of it until very late in May and after that she sent me some bureau covers and table cloths that Grandma had embroidered and given to her. Wasn't it nice of her to think of sending them to me? She could have sent me nothing that would have pleased me more. I was very fond both of her and of Miss Jane.
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Now I am going into genealogy with you. You know I still have to keep very quiet and so does Sheldon, though his lungs are cured, and all he is to do is to sit still out of doors. To interest ourselves we have taken up genealogy and are trying to get our ancestors straight. It is interesting work, but it is tiresome and very discouraging. We write letters to different town clerks who are invariably stupid in varying degrees. The great trouble is that we can't personally go around and see things. I wanted to take Sheldon and a camera this summer,
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all around Campbell Hall and Goshen to the old houses and burying grounds, but we had to postpone it. One of my chief objects of search has been the date of the marriage of Mary, widow of William Jackson who died in the Sugar House Prison, to Robert Thompson of Thompson Ridge near Middletown. I understood from Mamma's and Grandma's papers and letters that Mary married Robert after William's death in 1777. After a very lengthy correspondence with Thompsons all over the country, I find that Robert and Mary Thompson
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had a son Andrew born in 1773 and signed the deed to the Thompson farm in 1774. The birth date might be a mistake for 1775, but the deed in 1774 shows that Robert and Mary were man and wife then. My inference is naturally that this Mary and our Mary are not the same. But I am wondering if there can not have been another Robert Thompson whom our Mary did marry. My reason for thinking this is that our Mary's daughter Mary, who married Richard Jackson, named her last son Robert Thompson Jackson. He was the brother of your grandfather, W. W., and my great grandmother, Isabella. Our common ancestry begins at
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Richard and Mary Jackson, the parents of your grandfather and my great grandmother. I am wondering if your farm came from them or from your other ancestors. I don't wonder at your not wanting to sell it. Ancestral possessions like that are rare all over the world and especially so in America. Keep it always — but — if you ever do want to sell it, please let me know. I have always admired the old house and thought it must be fine to own it.
When I get well, and Sheldon and I settle down someplace, I want to see you all very often.
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and I think died young. My idea is that the second Mary may have named him after her half-brother, the son of her mother Mary and Robert Thompson. What do you think about it and have you ever heard anything about the Thompsons? I appeal to you for help because you are a generation older than I am. It seems funny for you to be earlier in generations and not any older in years, doesn't it? I do hope you will see some light. The puzzle drives me nearly crazy when I stop and try to think it out. It is worse than a picture puzzle.
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in November, I think. We had planned to go in October but the Doctor said it would be too hot then down there.
I seem to have written a great deal and I am afraid I might write more and bore you more, so I'll stop short. Sheldon sends his kindest regards, and I am as always
Your affectionate cousin,
Frances Hope Leavitt.
August 21, 1909.
