Preserving Family Legacies, No. 1, Part 6

Letters from Aunt Helen, Part 6

O P Q contained the PARKER family letters. Alright, now we've departed from tracing the Gertrude Ellen (WALTER) lineage and have gone back to her husband's NEWTON ancestors. Let's take a look at the NEWTON generations to see where Aunt Helen may have been going with this:

George Ulysses (8) Newton md. Gertrude Ellen WALTER, 1 July 1895 in Binghamton, NY

Francis Louis (7) Newton md. Elizabeth Mary RILEY, 5 Nov. 1854 in Maine, NY

Nahum (6) Newton md. Thankful PARKER, 22 Oct 1818 in poss. Worcester County, MA

Nahum (5) Newton Jr. md. Damaris BRIGHAM, 6 May 1778 in Marlborogh, Middlesex, MA

Nahum (4) Newton Sr. md. Tabitha SANDERSON, 30 Feb 1741 in Leicester, Worcester, MA

Joseph (3) Newton Jr. md. Abigail ----

Deacon Joseph (2) Newton md. Katharin WOODS, abt. 1670 in Marlborough, Middlesex, MA

Richard (1) Newton md. Amy LOKER, 9 Aug 1636 in Bures, Essex, England

R held the RILEY family history letters.

W provided letters relating to WALTER/DUDLEY/FIELD/SCRANTON/HOWARD, all of Guilford and Norfolk, CT. An interesting letter from the War Department, dated July 13, 1931, states:

There are no military records in this Department of a date prior to the War of the Revolution. Such Colonial War records are in existence, except those in the possession of the British Government, are most likely to be found in the custody of the various states that sent troops to those wars or, in some instances, of historical societies. . . . Signed, C. H. Bridges, Major General, The Adjutant General.

 Aunt Helen generally did not preserve copies of her outgoing correspondence, except in this case, where the War Dept. stamped it and returned it to her.

 

X & Z preserved a variety of documents. First is a blank fan chart from the Media Research Bureau, 1110 F. Street, Washington, DC, measuring 22" x 15". Following is an advertisement brochure for The Story of Connecticut, published by The Hartford Times. . . . "Every Home Should Have a Set" it boasts. "Original Price $3.00 for 3 Volumes. Now On Sale: $1.50. As you can see, a used copy now costs $30.00...ten times the original price!

American Library Services , 117 W 48th St., NY, NY

Much of the rest of my aunt's correspondence seems to be with a company where she was seeking to purchase genealogical volumes: The History of Chenango and Madison Counties, NY, by James H. Smith; The British Invasion of New Haven, Connecticut, by Charles Henry Townsend; The Morse Genealogy; The Newton Genealogy; History of Enfield; History of Madison County, NY, by Mrs. L. M. Hammond; History of the Colony of New Haven, by Edward E. Atwater; various other histories of Ridgefield, Wallingford, Simsbury, New Haven, Putnum, Connecticut, and various published genealogies on family surnames already mentioned. 

Tucked away in the very back of the file, however, was a real treasure: 

Letters from Mrs. Bertha Davey of Binghamton, NY.

She was my aunt's first cousin, the daughter of Charles Philetus WALTER and Ellen Adell DARLING, the sister of my great grandmother Gertrude Ellen (WALTER) NEWTON. Pages and pages of typewritten transcriptions from the CURTIS, SCRANTON, DUDLEY, MINOR, DARLING, and HOWARD genealogies, were held together by paperclips, and loosely rolled up at the bottom, revealing a multitude of abstracted family history.

It could take months and months just to process this information into my genealogical database, but this is nothing compared to the years of research and correspondence that went into this small letters file. 

Many thanks to all our family historians before us 

who left us a well-worn path through prior generations!