“Hand-penned letters written by our ancestors are evidence of their human spirit, and in part, our own.” ~ Sue Batton Leonard

Does anyone share my opinion that a part of civility went out the window when the popularity of corresponding by handwritten letter went by the wayside?

I ended up being the “caretaker” of the largest part of the maternal family ancestral records, memorabilia and ephemera. Among them are letters to and from one of my ancestors, whom I believe was a woman ahead of her time. She held a position in the late 1800’s that few other women in the country did. Her treasured correspondence has details about her employment and resignation from her position. The letters are so properly and beautifully communicated, they put our dashed off business and personal-related text and email communications in this day and age to shame.

Every so often I reread the letters, thinking I will try to pair down what I am storing, but five years after my parent’s deaths, it is very difficult to do. It would be like forgetting my forebearers from several past generations ever existed. To me, that is a moral/ethical dilemma when I think an author’s literary influences and writings, in part, come from the provision of one’s inherited background.

“…man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world…” Ralph Waldo Emerson