After a great deal of soul-searching, I decided I should present these hundred letters in as true and exact spelling as possible. The original writers’ orthography – rough though it may seem – can help us appreciate their personalities, culture, and society (above and beyond that insight given by their various language patterns and messages).

I also enjoy the flavor given by their variations in speelling ("to" for "too", "rite" for "write", etcet), and hope the reader will, too.

Nevertheless, every spelling and mispelling has been a judgement call, and I still worry that I may have "invented" some "errors," or "corrected" others. For example, in John McCauley’s letter of 30 October 1870, did he really ask if their cousin had gone to the "narth" shore, or was it simply a slightly "mis-shapen" letter "o" which I mistook for an "a?" I cannot answer, but over and over again I have had to choose, and I have.

Some spelling errors are so extreme as to possibly call into question the meaning of the sentence where they occur. E.g.: i did not get out are a night the roads was to muchy (Mary Ann McCauley, 4 November 1870). Perhaps are a night means "there at night," or "there a night" or even "for a night." Fortunately, the writers were extremely straightforward in their composition, and did not write to confuse, but rather, to inform. So examples like this – where spelling error complicates the determination of exact meaning – are rare.

Incidentally, "muchy" is probably "mucky" and not "mushy"... probably... and probably not the 20th century favorite: "too much" as in "the roads was too much, man..." [hee hee].

Typical modern spelling "errors" include: "rite" instead of "write" (no doubleyu in the original text), "to" instead of "too," or "liknes" instead of "likeness."

There is an almost complete lack of any punctuation whatsoever. No periods separate sentences, no commas separate clauses, etc. Again, I have resisted the temptation to "correct" the letters, and have inserted no punctuation marks. Those very few which you will see actually appear in the original letters.

Very rarely a letter writer would cross out what she (or he) had written. These crossed-out writings are included, printed in strikethrough type, thus: crossed-out writings.

At a very few points I have been unable to determine – or understand – what exactly the writer had written. The reader will find there a parenthetical question or comment added to the text in separate type.

No, Louisa hendall’s ma is NOT Dr ellsworth! But the reader, in order to understand this, must stop, break the flow, look back, and figure it out. In order to preclude such possible confusions and difficulties, I first thought I would have to insert periods, and maybe commas. That would have resulted in a text which looks like:

I saw john thomas yesterday, he was at
Sabbath school. we have a Sabbath school in our school
house. you would not know him, he has got a whiskre
and mustache. he is well, Ester is well. louisa hendall
is living in Owensound with Dr ellsworth. her ma
could not put up with her she got so saucy

But this effort seems half-hearted. Without capital letters at the beginning of every sentence, it looks awkward. Why not go all the way? Use capitalization, a full pallete of punctuation, and even spell-check. Oh hey, why not grammar check, too? And re-set it for the contemporary, typed page:

I saw John Thomas yesterday; he was at Sabbath school. We have a Sabbath school in our schoolhouse. You would not know him: he has got whiskers and a mustache. He is well; Ester is well.

Louisa Hendall is living in Owen Sound with Dr Ellsworth. She got so saucy that her ma could not put up with her.

Hey! Reads great! No? Well, yes, except that it’s a blessed lie. That is not at all what my great-grandmother’s cousin wrote to her. Even the words have been changed to protect the innocent (or the guilty).

I chewed on this problem for a long time, throughout the months/years that it took (in between working, being a parent, studying at the University, and writing hundreds of poems) to copy each and every one of the hundred letters. Each time I would try to edit them for publication, I would end up frustrated and convinced that there is absolutely no way to "correct" these letters without washing away much of their rough character and naive charm. I wanted to present them to the world with all their misspellings and missing punctuation. Yet, even when I had typed them into clearly legible printing, they still, as verbatim texts, were hard to read.

Finally I decided to use verse structure to bring out the meaning. My solution lay not in the letters, not in the words, not in the spelling or punctuation, but in the lines. If I stop thinking of paragraphs, and instead set these texts into verses, then I can make line breaks which follow the flow of ideas being expressed by the writers. Thus I can make them easier to read without correcting any spelling, without capitalizing any letters, without inserting any punctuation.

So, with the example above, I reset the lines to read:

I saw john thomas yesterday
he was at Sabbath school
we have a Sabbath school in our school house
you would not know him
he has got a whiskre and mustache
he is well

Ester is well

louisa hendall is living in Owensound with Dr ellsworth
her ma could not put up with her
she got so saucy

N.b.: included in the text is an example of underlining passages – one which I am not certain of the exact handwriting (in this case too difficult to read clearly) but from context I believe I have determined the spelling as it was written by the original writer.