Deep Roots Family Tree Blog

Interesting Record

These letters have been edited to make the handwriting easier to read. It was done in pencil so parts of it are quite faded. It is in surprisingly good condition to have been written in 1903. I have transcribed it and fixed some of the spelling and grammatical errors.

The letter reads:

Sep 17, 1903
Dear wife and family and Mother,
Well my dear. We got here Tuesday at 10. Mr. Jones has the place rented for us but it has been raining for 2 weeks so the man hasn’t got to trash yet so we both had to put our goods in the barn of Mr. Jones here in town. So Dear you better stay and visit up to Waterloo and around where ever you want to till them people get out so we can move in.
We got onboarded yesterday and I was awful tired. The boys got through all right. The sun is shining this morning. It rained all the way up here and was cold too. The horses were all looking [something]. We had to lay in the yards at Saint Paul all day Sunday. We are going out in the country to day to look about some hay to put up.
So dear you better stay and visit a couple of weeks yet for there is no place to get in. So we would have to board her in town and that would cost like everything. So stay around and visit and I will write again in a few days. So to let you know how things are.
Well I will close hoping this will find you all well. Mother and all. So good by love at all.
Write soon – your loving husband J. D. Martin

I’m not 100% sure that my second great-grandfather, John David Martin is the author of this letter, but he makes the most sense. If I am correct, the recipient of the letter would be his wife, Katherine. He is writing to Kate, their children (they had many), and who I think is John David’s mom, Emily.

These letters were likely written as the family was moving out of the Iowa region, where John David Martin was born and had married Kate, to North Dakota. As the kids grew older, they scattered throughout the mid-west, mostly in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. I’m sure the move with many young children was incredibly difficult.

There are several things about this letter that are meaningful to me. There’s something special about holding and reading something that your ancestor wrote on. Seeing their handwriting. You can’t get more personal than that.