Old letters

Hi all, I am in the midst of clearing a house and have chanced upon a box of letters that I am currently looking through. Two of the letters were written by sisters to their cousin when they were all children.

I have since found out that both sisters were nurses in ww1 and both were killed on duty and are buried in commonwealth graves. Does any more experienced folk reckon these can be of any value to anybody?

The family in question were pretty prominent in the military- there is also another letter from a man to his daughter. He was head of the PWD department in one of the British colonies. This letter was written when he was abroad and contains a drawing of the place he was staying. He died on his way home and was buried at sea.

 

the families may not know these exist.....

 

I believe they did - the house belonged to one of the last remaining members. Sadly she had nobody to leave them to.

 

If you are sure there are no descendants, a local historical society is always an option.

Debora

 

That’s so sad! The two sisters who wrote my letters are mentioned in several places online as it was rare for two females from the same family to die in service during ww1. Their father was a rector and a very famous hymn writer - Cecil Frances Alexander - had lived in the rectory previously. She is also mentioned in the letters.

I’m glad I managed to salvage them as they were in an old rubbish filled room and would likely have been thrown out otherwise. There is a shoebox full, with some dating back 200 years. It’s going to take me a while to decipher the handwriting though.

 

Really doesn’t sound that it was in her best emotional wellbeing to buy those letters..

 

Assuming you are in Ireland, you might try contacting the University College Dublin Archives.

 

This sort of thing can have research value as primary sources for scholars, but seems unlikely you could realize any monetary value that would offset the labor & expense of putting the letters on the market. I agree that it would be better to donate them to any appropriate academic or historical entity you can identify.

If you post some clear photos of problematic handwriting excerpts, we can probably help with that, It would not be the first time. Many of us are cursive natives.

 

Or the opposite.

Letters like these are a boon to historians and researchers of all sorts, but don't have a ton of monetary value as objects. Geneaologists fall all over themselves in delight when they find some.