Back in the Saddle

Hudson and Joy Letters from October 1856

I'm back to work on this book, although it feels more like play. It's something I absolutely need to be doing, not only because of my interests and other factors, but because of my Inherent temperament. I said that after the new year I would begin to split my time between my online animal store and my writing. So today I began. 

Somewhere in this pile of letters, a portion of the folder for October 1856, is a letter from Jerome Hudson in Vermont to his brother Nathaniel in Iowa. It's partially transcribed, since I "transcribed the meat" out of many of the letters a number of years ago. But beyond the meat is a lot of interesting information and much of the joy in reading letters. Jerome is studying survey in Townshend and wants to tell his brother about the new surveying instrument purchase by the school. His skills as a surveyor will guarantee him work when he goes west, where land sales and trades are blooming, and people from the East are coming in record numbers to stake their claims.

I feel as though I have a dozen books in me right now, and this one is of primary importance to me to finish this year.

Come visit my home page at tapirback.com.

I Got Stuck

A xeroxed letter dated 1856 and some 

painted macaw pins on my work table

September 15, 2012

I didn't get writer's-block stuck, as in "I don't know what to write," but I have stopped writing for most of the past few weeks. I was proofreading the transcript from this 1856 letter (what you see on my work table here is a xerox of the letter), when several things happened: 

1) I don't enjoy the minute proofing as much as the writing, initial transcribing, and research. I learn from these things.

2) I started thinking about money and immediate expenses, and I began working on my online store again. I would like to get all of the pained animal pins put up well before Christmas, and there are hundreds left to do. You can see a few colorful macaws above. They are beautiful, fun to work with, and I am excited that people will have a chance to find them. (I suppose this does not mean I couldn't spend SOME time proofing, but it has indeed become a block; therefore, I will blog about it, dumping some of my innards, engaging in the creative process, and avoiding the proofing a few hours longer.)

3) I started working on other online potential-income things and also working on various blogs again.

4) My parathyroid illness is temporarily worse again. "Another story for another day."

5) And this may be the one excuse worth looking at. The letters I am avoiding working on are not especially germane to this book. The critic on my shoulder says it's a waste of time to labor over them. The believer/supporter on my other shoulder disagrees, but the critic at this moment is SO much louder. It has no need. There are many good reasons to "waste time" taking care over the "dead ox incident" described.

As part of the task I set for myself, I wanted to transcribe and make available to readers and researchers every letter and document in my collection, whether they all end up in the final published book or not. I also find the details of the lives I'm exposing extremely interesting to ME, and maybe others will enjoy them, too. It does sometimes become tedious to try to discern whether an "A" is capitalized or not, whether a dash is a period, or whether a new paragraph should be started when the writer ended a line short, but did not indent the next. These decisions sometimes drive me crazy, but oddly enough, they can help form insights into what the writer was thinking, whether something was important to them, or whether they were in a particular hurry. I also want to be accurate, because the transcript is all most readers after me will see.

Back to the letter at hand. The writer is incidental. He (they, for it is a letter enclosed within another letter) do not appear again in the story. But what they bring in their cameo appearance is a touch of the reality of daily life in 1850s Iowa and tells us what a lawyer of the day might be dealing with. A lawyer in Iowa writes to Nathaniel, who is also a lawyer, but in a different town in Iowa. The first lawyer encloses a letter from a man in Nathaniel's town who needed help. The man had borrowed a team of oxen from a friend in eastern Iowa to move his family and goods to Sioux City in western Iowa. He was supposed to have sold the oxen on arrival and sent his friend the payment. But he didn't. 

I don't know why photos taken by my phone won't orient 

correctly some of the time . . . sorry about that.

The settler used the oxen for awhile to work his new land, and then one of the oxen apparently got "dry pneumonia" and died. What good is an ox team with only one ox? The surviving ox was fat and salable for beef, but would the owner settle for proceeds from only one ox? 

In addition to the legal question, I am reminded of the importance of that animal that has all but vanished from most of our lives, and even from the scenes in my imagination. When I think of the 1800s, I think of transportation by horseback, carriage, stagecoach, and I think of horses. On a farm, I picture cows, pigs, and sheep. The ox does not come to mind. Thanks to an old letter that my inner critic said was a waste of time, I have broadened my mental landscape of life in 1850s Midwestern America and my understanding of what these times were like for my ancestors. As an animal lover, I also like to think the oxen will be remembered. It's probably time to proceed.

Come visit my home page at tapirback.com.

Cross Writing from 1856

N.C. Hudson to Helen R. Joy ~

August 15, 1856

Same letter as above

Cross writing was a popular way to save on postage and paper in the 1700s and 1800s. Fortunately for me, there are not a lot of cross-written letters in the Hudson and Joy collection I'm working on, and when the people do cross write, it's usually only a small portion of the letter. Some examples can get pretty extreme, though, as you can see from these letters that came up in a Google image search.

I've found cross writing to be easier to read than you might think, especially once you get used to someone's handwriting. In the case of Nathaniel's letter to Helen (above), I had to get out the old Agfa Lupe to be sure about his first line (after the date and "My Dearest Helen"). Not only does the writing cross, but it's extremely light. There is not usually much fading in these letters, but either his ink was thin, the paper was slick and the ink didn't adhere very well to the first page, or it really did fade.

(Later) 

Aha! It's the ink. At the end Nathaniel apologizes for "this miserable looking letter - I believe my ink is entirely spoiled."

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.