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1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Manuscripts
Series of letters from Ella Shute to her friend Louie Earle Williams, written when Ella was living in Wheatfields, Arizona, "12 miles from the mines" (she asks Louie to direct her letters to Globe City). Ella writes of her family life, their many illnesses ("every one here seems like dead people," she wrote in 1876) since moving "to the mines," and the cost of goods. She also writes of her son Walter (whom she refers to as Charles Clifton until 1878), including an incident where he was run over by a wagon wheel in 1879, and the birth of her son Eugene in 1878. She notes that her father, brothers Frank and Henry, and husband George are "at work in the mines," but that "we are not making any thing only a living." Frank also briefly worked at the Miami Mill Company until it burned down in May 1879. Ella speculated that it might have been arson, and lamented that the incident had caused many families to move away and had detrimentally affected the Middletons' and Shutes' mining interests. She also writes of dry conditions in August 1879, and that "the Indians ha[ve] burned every thing out and it will take a great deal of rains to bring every thing out again." Ella writes that she is unsure of the population of Wheatfields but that there are "so many young men down here that wants to get married but there is...few girls and they won't get married unless they get a rich man." She also mentions that her brother Henry and sister Hattie have gone away to school at the Picket Poste, and urges Louie to have her father move their family to Arizona. Also included is a letter to Louie from her friend Jennie A. Huckaby in Alexander, Illinois. Jennie writes that she envies Louie's work in a milliner's shop ("let's both learn [the trade] then we can set up a shop together"),that she hopes to be well enough to return home to Iowa soon, and of her "cherished wish" to go to California. She concludes that there "is nothing going on here except a negro excursion to Chicago."
mssHM 76737-76747