Letter from Mama Margaret to Will: 11/14/1909
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A letter from Mama Margaret, living with Alma in South Hadley, Massachusetts, to her oldest child Will, in Savannah, Georgia.
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Sunday Nov. 14th
My dear Will,
Are you too busy making Candy to write to us? I thought you would write for the recipe for making that kind we sent for your birth-day. We haven’t made any since, but I intend to try it someday alone. Miss Jackson managed that.
We had two faculty here this evening for lunch. Miss Dover is Canadian, and is very funny. She dresses so mannish and isn’t a bit that way. The students speak of her as Mr. Dover. She and Alma have a table together at Safford. Alma is very fond of her. She says she is going to get some new clothes as they don’t dress here like they do in Canada. It will make her look much better for she is not bad looking dressed as she is.
Have you seen any of that new disease that seems to be prevalent in the South. It is written up in the Digest for last week. Pellagra I believe it is called.
When I was in New York Dr. Piersen gave me an examination. He is Tom Evans wife’s brother. He and his wife were at the wedding and they were at Eva’s one evening for dinner. He says the Eczema is caused by blocked blood vessels following the operation I had in ‘97. I know it commenced that year. He gave me some medicine but I can’t see that it has helped me any. If anything it is getting worse.
Can you let me have some money? Alma says she will be short until after the holidays. I know she has some bills for Eva’s things to pay yet and wants to get a suit and to go to Boston to the science meeting. Mrs. Hurlbut in Oberlin still owes me $14.50 for furniture. She wrote about a year ago that she would send it soon. It didn’t come so I wrote to her in the spring when I needed money and she never answered. Then I wrote about two weeks ago and I am afraid she is going to treat it the same way. She is honest [crossed out: but] and I know they have a hard time to get on but she might have written. I don’t like to ask for money after you sent so much, but I got less than three dollars out of what you sent and I know you meant some of it for me. What ever you can spare will be very acceptable.
With much love from
Mother
My dear Will,
Are you too busy making Candy to write to us? I thought you would write for the recipe for making that kind we sent for your birth-day. We haven’t made any since, but I intend to try it someday alone. Miss Jackson managed that.
We had two faculty here this evening for lunch. Miss Dover is Canadian, and is very funny. She dresses so mannish and isn’t a bit that way. The students speak of her as Mr. Dover. She and Alma have a table together at Safford. Alma is very fond of her. She says she is going to get some new clothes as they don’t dress here like they do in Canada. It will make her look much better for she is not bad looking dressed as she is.
Have you seen any of that new disease that seems to be prevalent in the South. It is written up in the Digest for last week. Pellagra I believe it is called.
When I was in New York Dr. Piersen gave me an examination. He is Tom Evans wife’s brother. He and his wife were at the wedding and they were at Eva’s one evening for dinner. He says the Eczema is caused by blocked blood vessels following the operation I had in ‘97. I know it commenced that year. He gave me some medicine but I can’t see that it has helped me any. If anything it is getting worse.
Can you let me have some money? Alma says she will be short until after the holidays. I know she has some bills for Eva’s things to pay yet and wants to get a suit and to go to Boston to the science meeting. Mrs. Hurlbut in Oberlin still owes me $14.50 for furniture. She wrote about a year ago that she would send it soon. It didn’t come so I wrote to her in the spring when I needed money and she never answered. Then I wrote about two weeks ago and I am afraid she is going to treat it the same way. She is honest [crossed out: but] and I know they have a hard time to get on but she might have written. I don’t like to ask for money after you sent so much, but I got less than three dollars out of what you sent and I know you meant some of it for me. What ever you can spare will be very acceptable.
With much love from
Mother
1909-11-14: tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
Are you too busy making Candy to write to us? I thought you would write for the recipe for making that kind we sent for your birth-day. We haven’t made any since, but I intend to try it someday alone. Miss Jackson managed that.
Will's 34th birthday was November 3, 1909.
I'm wondering if Miss Jackson is Ethel Jackson. It seems unlikely to me, but I do keep hoping I'll figure out someday how Alma came to know Ethel.
2.
Miss Dover is Canadian, and is very funny. She dresses so mannish and isn’t a bit that way.
I wonder what was considered "mannish" in 1909. I don't suppose Miss Dover went so far as to wear trousers.
3.
Have you seen any of that new disease that seems to be prevalent in the South. It is written up in the Digest for last week. Pellagra I believe it is called.
Wikipedia says:
Pellagra is a disease caused by a lack of the vitamin niacin (vitamin B3).[2] Symptoms include inflamed skin, diarrhea, dementia, and sores in the mouth. Areas of the skin exposed to friction and radiation are typically affected first.[1] Over time, affected skin may become darker, stiffen, peel, or bleed.
Also:
Pellagra was first reported in 1902 in the United States, and has "caused more deaths than any other nutrition-related disease in American history", reaching epidemic proportions in the American South during the early 1900s. Poverty and consumption of corn were the most frequently observed risk factors, but the exact cause was not known, until groundbreaking work by Joseph Goldberger. A 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research paper explored the role of cotton production in the emergence of disease; one prominent theory is that "widespread cotton production had displaced local production of niacin-rich foods and driven poor Southern farmers and mill workers to consume milled Midwestern corn, which was relatively cheap but also devoid of the niacin necessary to prevent pellagra."
4.
When I was in New York Dr. Piersen gave me an examination. He is Tom Evans wife’s brother. He and his wife were at the wedding and they were at Eva’s one evening for dinner. He says the Eczema is caused by blocked blood vessels following the operation I had in ‘97. I know it commenced that year. He gave me some medicine but I can’t see that it has helped me any. If anything it is getting worse.
Tom Evans must have been a relative of Eva's then-husband, Frank Evans.
When I googled, I found nothing about blocked blood vessels causing eczema, but maybe it wasn't what we would call eczema today.
I think Mama Margaret's issue was with her leg or legs - it seems to me it keeps cropping up, but I haven't been keeping track of it. The 1897 operation must have been in relation to something mentioned in Mama Margaret's 1900 divorce petition: That in the month of June, 1897, near the middle part of the month, at a time when the plaintiff was sick, and unable to move from one chair to another, the defendant was again guilty of extreme cruelty toward the plaintiff in this: That he swore at, and cursed her, called her names and used language of and toward the plaintiff of a character in substance as used heretofore in this petition.
Are you too busy making Candy to write to us? I thought you would write for the recipe for making that kind we sent for your birth-day. We haven’t made any since, but I intend to try it someday alone. Miss Jackson managed that.
Will's 34th birthday was November 3, 1909.
I'm wondering if Miss Jackson is Ethel Jackson. It seems unlikely to me, but I do keep hoping I'll figure out someday how Alma came to know Ethel.
2.
Miss Dover is Canadian, and is very funny. She dresses so mannish and isn’t a bit that way.
I wonder what was considered "mannish" in 1909. I don't suppose Miss Dover went so far as to wear trousers.
3.
Have you seen any of that new disease that seems to be prevalent in the South. It is written up in the Digest for last week. Pellagra I believe it is called.
Wikipedia says:
Pellagra is a disease caused by a lack of the vitamin niacin (vitamin B3).[2] Symptoms include inflamed skin, diarrhea, dementia, and sores in the mouth. Areas of the skin exposed to friction and radiation are typically affected first.[1] Over time, affected skin may become darker, stiffen, peel, or bleed.
Also:
Pellagra was first reported in 1902 in the United States, and has "caused more deaths than any other nutrition-related disease in American history", reaching epidemic proportions in the American South during the early 1900s. Poverty and consumption of corn were the most frequently observed risk factors, but the exact cause was not known, until groundbreaking work by Joseph Goldberger. A 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research paper explored the role of cotton production in the emergence of disease; one prominent theory is that "widespread cotton production had displaced local production of niacin-rich foods and driven poor Southern farmers and mill workers to consume milled Midwestern corn, which was relatively cheap but also devoid of the niacin necessary to prevent pellagra."
4.
When I was in New York Dr. Piersen gave me an examination. He is Tom Evans wife’s brother. He and his wife were at the wedding and they were at Eva’s one evening for dinner. He says the Eczema is caused by blocked blood vessels following the operation I had in ‘97. I know it commenced that year. He gave me some medicine but I can’t see that it has helped me any. If anything it is getting worse.
Tom Evans must have been a relative of Eva's then-husband, Frank Evans.
When I googled, I found nothing about blocked blood vessels causing eczema, but maybe it wasn't what we would call eczema today.
I think Mama Margaret's issue was with her leg or legs - it seems to me it keeps cropping up, but I haven't been keeping track of it. The 1897 operation must have been in relation to something mentioned in Mama Margaret's 1900 divorce petition: That in the month of June, 1897, near the middle part of the month, at a time when the plaintiff was sick, and unable to move from one chair to another, the defendant was again guilty of extreme cruelty toward the plaintiff in this: That he swore at, and cursed her, called her names and used language of and toward the plaintiff of a character in substance as used heretofore in this petition.
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DOCUMENT LISTS FOR PEOPLE:
- WILL: DOCUMENTS ----- Incoming
- ALMA: DOCUMENTS ----- Related
- EVA: DOCUMENTS ----- Related
- MAMA MARGARET: DOCUMENTS ----- Outgoing
- FRANK EVANS: DOCUMENTS ----- Related
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- DOCUMENTS SORTED BY WHERE THEY WERE WRITTEN ----- Western Massachusetts
- DOCUMENTS SORTED BY SOURCE ----- Barbara
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