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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

1875 tip: Stay out of deep water

I had amazing good luck this past weekend at a sale in Norwalk, CT. There is something to be said for getting to a sale late and staying to the end. That is what I did, and this box is what I got:
Ephemera
Many of these things I will be posting in the weeks to come. My favorite item at the moment is this post card from 1875:
Post card 1875
1875 post card
 The note reads: 
Appleton City Aug 4th 1875
Mr Mead

Dear sir:
In answer to yours of 2nd Inst (Instruction?). I will say I will take care in coming not drive into deep water. I will not be there to day. I could not get a team, will be the tomorrow or next day at farthest. Julia is well and perfectly contented. She says she wished Pa would move up here . I will take as good care of her as you would yourself.
Yours, Wm H. Stahl

I have tried to draw what conclusions of this I could, presuming that Julia was Mr Mead's daughter. I believe I have the locations correct, but the distance Mr Stahl needs to travel with a team of horses does not look like a day or 2 trip. Take a look:
Map
 That's close to 600 miles!

There is more to reveal from this box of goodies, not to mention the other 2 boxes of old newspapers and magazines. Coming soon....

2 comments:

  1. I've always wondered about the abbreviation "Inst." in old letters, so today I finally looked it up. It's short for "instante mense" and means the date referred to was in the current month.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inst

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Every commentator is my better, in that I may learn from them." Thanks lrf! I learn something new every day.

    ReplyDelete

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