I'm not sure how my images of these letters are going to come off, but I wanted to try and share a bit of my latest find/obsession with y'all

I found a pile of old letters at an antique store last weekend, many of them to and from the same people. Miss Anna Belle Moore stands out prominently, as many of the letters are love letters written to her, or just affectionate notes from friends.

As an aside to Poly Histor, many of the envelopes are directed to the "Poly Hts" department, where she attended Texas Woman's College in the early 1920s.

It's fun to read how college kids "talked" 80+ years ago.

I'll post pages 2, 3, and 4 of this letter if there's any interest. It may take me months, years or forever to get around to scanning all of them. A lot are in the wrong envelope or no envelope. Some are dated, helpfully, "Sunday nite" or somesuch.

Ringtop

Here's the first page

Here's page two. I wish I could just post the image, but my URL is to long to be accepted, as near as I can figure.



Ringtop

Oh, sure, now I canpost an image. Humph. So, here's page 3:

And, the last page

Thanks for the peak into the past, Ringtop. The laptop I am using has not been color corrected, so I wonder if the ink really is as purple as it seems. Can you compare it to any modern ink?

The color is quite similar to the violet ink I use, which is Pelikan 4001 Violet. Maybe it's just a tad darker. I know a lot more companies made a great variety of colors in the heyday of fountain pen usage, and violet was a fairly popular color, after black I suppose.
The woman at the antique store asked me if that ink really started out purple, suggesting that it may have "changed with age". No, I'm pretty sure it was purple in 1923.

Vida

[COLOR=purple]

Vida

Hey! Did you go back and buy all the letters or just the one?

Ken

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this. The color looks like my favorite color--Herbin's Moondust. How does it compare to that? (I don't have Pelikan 4001 Violet.)


BTW-Happy Birthday!

Wow, amazing little vivid slice of time there. Poor fellow. Are all the love letters from him, or did she have other admirers?

I can't make his name out.

Yes, Ken, I really did go back and buy all the letters. I was afraid if I left some, they'd be the ones with some essential clue. They were all from the same estate, I believe.

Sonia, I think the letter is signed "Esher", but at first I thought it was "Ester". Suppose it could be "Esker"? Considering that Anna Belle often goes by "Abe", there is no telling who Esher is.

There are very few letters in E's handwriting, I think, and I can't find an envelope that perfectly matches this letter.

Some of the handwriting in these letters is mindblowingly idiosyncratic, and it takes a while of staring at it for it to start to become legible. "E", you may notice, is not a fan of capitalizing letters that begin sentences. Perhaps that's why Anna Belle dropped him after all.

Vida

Poor E. I caught myself reading his letters in an Elmer Fudd voice. Maybe Anna Belle did too.

Ringtop,

Thanks for sharing these letters. I love old letters. I have a bunch of old letters written by family during World War II. Maybe I'll start going through these. Even if the content is boring, it will be interesting to see what the paper and ink looked like - and to guess what kind of pen they used.

Judybug

The writing style reminds me of how some younger people write email.

Violet definitely is the color that makes me think of love letters, and it looks like he wrote it with a dip pen (writing starts strong, get's fainter over the course of a line or two, then the pen is dipped, ink on the page goes on thick, and starts going back to faint).

The second to last line is a little weird: "Too bad about the little boy dying" is what I got, though it seems out of place.

I agree. The author of this letter is definitely ga-ga over Anna Belle, but if "the little boy dying" was something to mention at all, it seems like a little more should have been said about it. It's a puzzling remark, but then - that's part of the fun of old letters - the mystery.

Judybug

Could've been something that made national news in that day...

Judybug,
I do hope you'll take a look at your old family letters. Old letters are far more interesting to me now that I've taken an interest in old writing instuments and ink. Even when the content is snooze-inducing the handwriting itself captivates me.

And, oh, no! Sonia! I didn't hear Esher's letter in an Elmer Fudd voice at all, but there are very few letters from him. I thought him quite dashing, if only for his violet ink and cavalier writing style. Perhaps that was a romance that didn't take off at all. Too sad.

Kalessin, I have no idea about the little boy. I'd like to think he was a character in a book that Anna Belle was reading for school.

I've gone and bought a yearbook from the college that Anna Belle was attending during the time she was corresponding so much. I hope to have pictures of her soon. The yearbook is from 1921, and I'm not sure she was at school that year, but I have my fingers crossed. She would've been a freshman that year.

Thanks for the b-day wishes, Tony. I'll be celebrating here all month!

Ringtop.

I hope you do find her picture & can post it here. Wouldn't that be fun to see?!

Judybug, I can't urge you strongly enough to go through your family letters. Read them, pull their story together and share them with your family. Don't let them get away from you. I had a couple of hundred letters that had been written by my mother and her brothers as they served during WW II. I came across these letters while handling my mothers estate. At the time I couldn't keep everything that belonged to my mother and I regret having let these letters slip through my hands. Now some 20 years later I wish that I had kept them and organized them in a way that the whole family could have enjoyed.


Ken

Ken,

I have indeed started going through these letters, but it will take some time. I also have a suitcase full of my mother's journals, spanning from 1945 to sometime in the 60s. I've started typing them and saving them in computer files so I can share them with my kids. Even though I'm retired, it's hard to find the time - everyday life intervenes.

Judybug

Judybug,

I hear ya! I recently retired and it feels like I have less time instead of more. Currently I'm sifting through hundreds of old family photos and 35mm slides that my father took. I am scanning everything that I can so that I can save copies for my children and grand children. It is a full time project. Good luck with yours.

Ken

p-zero,
Thanks for encouraging me. I got a xeroxed picture of Abe from a nice man in California. Here's a scan of that. Look what a cutie she was!

I can't believe you found a photo! Very cool!

Ringtop,

This is amazing! How in the world did you locate a picture? Abe was certainly a cute little thing. I'll bet she got tons of love letters.

Judybug

<rummaging through parts bin to repair time machine>

Wow, she looks like a pistol. What a doll.

Judy,
This is how I found that picture. I googled Texas Woman's College, and someone had posted a list of students from the year 1923. When I e-mailed him, he sent me the blurb about her in the yearbook which was
When I asked him about pictures of her in that yearbook, he said there were several, and he offered to have his daughters go to the library, xerox them for me, and send them on (for a very nominal fee).
Here is the first page of a letter that Anna Belle wrote to Monty, who I think is who she ended up marrying (since their letters ended up together)


The last time I tried to scan the entire letter, my scanner crashed my computer, so this is all I'm putting up at the moment.

Ringtop (Vida)

WOW! That is so amazing that you were able to locate her picture! I'll bet she never imagined in a million years that correspondence & a picture of her would be posted for "the world" to see! I love reading this ordinary stuff about ordinary people that lived in another time. Thanks for sharing!