Manuscripts
Ralph S. Michel. Letter to Mary Michel Bartholomew
- Description
- The collection includes correspondence between three generations of the Michel and Bartholomew families, ranging from 1847-1913. Both families were highly educated, literate, and interested in politics, which is apparent in many of their writings. The earliest letters were written by Mary Eletra Loveridge to Robert B. Michel during their courtship in 1847. Mary specifically writes of her interest in Emanuel Swedenborg, her religious disagreements with her mother, her loneliness and lack of female friends, of her love of books, and of multiple local deaths from cholera. Other courtship letters include those between Mary M. Michel and James Bartholomew in the early 1880s. James writes of Ben Butler (1884 Presidential nominee for the Greenback-Labor Party), his political disagreements with his father, his anxiousness to get married, and the need for him to travel to California as soon as possible. Later letters written to Mary after their marriage recount his 1893 travels through London, Paris, Vienna, and parts of Germany, as well as his return to the United States aboard the ship Alaska. Mary writes of her love of books, her thoughts on the 1884 election, and notes on a variety of friends and family members. In letters written from California to her sisters Annie and Elizabeth from 1884, Mary writes of her first impressions of California, reminiscences of their childhood, her first experience with an earthquake on April 19, 1885, the hardships of being a doctor's wife, and candid descriptions of neighbors and acquaintances. Later letters to her daughter Eleanor Bartholomew focus on family and community activities and the experiences of her son Robert. The collection also includes a long series of letters written from Eleanor Bartholomew to her brother Robert, both while she was at school in Brooklyn and when she was attending Bryn Mawr. In addition to notes on family and school acquaintances, Eleanor's letters cover a wide variety of topics, including descriptions of Brooklyn and her busy college schedule. Other notable items in the collection include a letter from William A. Michel to his brother Robert written in 1853 when William was traveling through Council Bluffs and Jefferson City aboard the Polar Star steamship on his way to California; a few photographs of Mary Michel Bartholomew, Mary Eleanor Bartholomew, and an unidentified Michel man; a cookbook kept by Robert Michel's sister Elizabeth Michel Blair probably in the 1830s and 1840s; and some Confederate printed money collected by Robert Michel in Mississippi.
