A 110-YEAR-OLD LETTER THAT LIVES FOR ME

What follows is a new post that I have added to my "Dresden: Father and Son Turn Back the Clock" web site.  I thought I would share it with readers of Wrights Lane too, because it is a favorite piece of family heritage that I occasionally dig out of a 100-year-old strong box, just to read and to let my imagination wander to the point of communion with a grandfather and grandmother that I never knew.  I keep hoping that I will find answers to nagging questions, but know full well that I never will.  Still, it is a precious partial link that draws me close.

   

QUESTIONS THAT WILL NEVER BE ANSWERED

Here is a letter dated July 30, 1902 that was written by grandfather Wesley Wright to grandmother Louise Wright.  It was post-marked "St. Paul's, Minn."  The brief 110-year-old letter posses some obvious questions: 1) What was Wes doing in the State of Minnesota? and 2) Who accompanied him?  Was this a business or pleasure trip?  Documentation from the period shows him as being a farmer and/or a yeoman but he was also a financier of sorts, loaning money privately, holding township and Huron & Erie debentures and investing in numerous mortgages on properties in the Kent County area and Township of Sandwich East.  The source of his capital remains a mystery.  Chances of me ever having answers to these questions are quite remote as I am now the sole survivor of this branch of the Wright family.  My father passed away when I was only 13 years old and never got around to telling me much about my grandparents' affairs.

Contents of the letter, however, tell something of my grandfather's personality and character.  A throwback entrepreneur, he was no doubt a quiet man who was not all that comfortable expressing his emotions.  Judging from the sentence structure and spelling in his letter, he was not an overly educated man.  Here's the letter as he wrote it:

July 30

Dear love  Just a few liens (lines)  I was glad to hear from you  I have visited a good many places around here  it is very nice but I am tired of it  their (there is) no place like home  I leve (leave) the first for Dulugh (Duluth) then take the boat Saturday August the 2

I will tell more when I get home  we are both well  

I hope this will find you all well  love to all and a big share to your self

Yours truly

Wes

(P.S.) poor little kenith (son Kenneth who would have been three-years-of-age at the time) I which (wish) I was sleeping with him to night

Note: Both Wesley (1920) and Louise (1932) were deceased by the time I was born.  I which...oops, sorry..."wish" that I had known them -- and they me.