Dancharthos : Genealogos : Dear Martha

Dear Martha: Index & Brief Notes

The editor holds a collection of one hundred letters written to Martha McCauley Thomas and John Japheth Ebenezar Thomas of Ontario, in the years from 1867 to 1882. Here shall present the first fourteen.

Writers are (were), for the most part, Martha's sisters and brothers, though husband-to-be John J.E. Thomas also writes a good number of love letters from 1872 and 1873. TBA.

More letters will be gradually added once editing of these first fourteen is completed. Stay tuned, or write. {--September 2002--}

Letters Indexed by Author Signature and Date.

Sarah Ann McCurdy
March 10, 1869

Sarah A McCurdy
May 30, 1869

Mary Ann McCauley
September 17, 1869

Sarah Ann McCurdy
October 4, 1869

unsigned (Sarah A McCurdy)
December 15, 1869

Mary Ann McCauley
August 8, 1870

John McCauley
October 30, 1870

Mary A. McCauley
November 4, 1870

John McCauley
December 11, 1870

Mary A. McCauley
December 18, 1870

Mary A. McCauley
March 16, 1871

Mary A. McCauley
April 6, 1871

Mary Ann McCauley
July 23, 1871

Mary McCauley
September 5, 1871

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The sample from the collection has been titled "Dear Martha" because she appears to have been the primary collector and conservator.

A working title for the entire collection will be: COME BEFORE THE FLOWERS ARE ALL GONE, a quote from a later letter. These first letters are addressed solely to Martha by maiden name. It appears that nearly all of her correspondents wrote first to her, and then, happily (one assumes) after she married John, they wrote to both. One outstanding exception: the one letter which she herself wrote, to John, after they had been married several years (not included here).

The birth and death dates of John and Martha are unknown, and are not mentioned in the letters. However, their marriage, as evidenced by the letters, took place in 1872. They went on to have two daughters, Ellie and Maggie, whose births and early childhoods are attested by later letters. Their third known child, was born January 18, 1888, almost six years after the last letter in the collection. His son, William Jr. (1921-1977) would become father to the author/editor of this website celebrating his ancestral writers.

Up to Index.

Further notes: 1. Underlining. // 2. Spelling. // 3. Punctuation. // 4. Parenthetical Questions/Remarks. // 5. Line/Verse Editing. ---

1. Underlining:

If an item is underlined (e.g.: whiskre), it means I had difficulty deciphering the writing, but have deduced (or guessed) what the writer might have meant.

If a pure underlined empty space (e.g.: _____) appears, this means I could neither read the text nor determine what it might have said at that point.

Fortunately, within the text of the letters themselves, such incidences are quite rare.

However, this underlining treatment is much more evident in the transcription of postmarks on the outsides of the envelopes. Much of their rubber-stamp printing has faded through the century plus decades since the letters were posted. Yet they are to some extent deducible, as there are/were a limited number of towns and they (assumedly) rarely or never changed their names.

For example:

Ont – (postal abbreviation for Ontario) this indicates fading of the first two letters (On) but from context and the yet readible "t" I could determine what it had originally said.

____ – represents a vanished text (or postmark) of which I am not certain.

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2. Spelling:

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."

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3. Punctuation:

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.

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4. Parenthetical Questions/Remarks.

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.

5. Line/Verse Editing.

This is where I made my biggest changes. Although I have strictly adhered to the writers’ original spelling and lack of punctuation (to the best of my own limitations as a reader), I have reset the lines of the texts into verses, in order to clarify their meaning. Using free verse as a tool, I bring forward the message of the writers, without actually changing any of their words (although certainly I have edited their form – no lo contendere that charge).

To understand why I have done this, consider the original texts. The letters as written were, for the most part, begun at the top of a small piece of paper and continued almost to the end of the other side. Every available space was usually filled with writing (the men, more than the women, will leave unused space at the end). There are no periods to mark ends of sentences, nor paragraphs. The text is simply line after line of words and words and word.

For example, from Sarah Ann McGurdy’s letter of October 4, 1869:

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

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.

To Index

All Letters have been edited and reformated into verse form to assist in their reading. As such they are edited material and are Copyright 2001-2002 Daniel Charles Thomas (dates of gradual publication on this electronic publishing site). All rights are reserved. Feminist scholars and other persons interested in obtaining access or rights of publication are urged to contact the editor at dancharthos@yahoo.com or dancharthos@hotmail.com -- I answer most email within a week, sometimes two (depending on travels) -- if my spam filter doesn't kill it first....