Ancestry Magazine

When was the last time the mailman brought you a real letter from some one you care about? Though we still manage to stay in touch through e-mail and newsletters, today’s correspondence hardly compares to good, old-fashioned letters.

I’ve always loved reading letters–even letters that weren’t written to me. My mother must be to blame. She saved letters, and without thinking of why I was doing it, I’ve saved letters, too. Most of them tell the story of our family–the good times, the bad times, people and events in our lives, what we have accomplished, and what we value. Written by ordinary people, most letters are not great works of literature, but each one provides an extraordinary insight into a life that has touched mine and influenced me in some way.

When my brother and his wife celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary recently, I struggled to come up with a unique gift for them. It was a milestone event and I wanted to give them something meaningful. For weeks I rummaged through closets and boxes that hadn’t seen the light of day in years. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for at first. Pieces of their past showed up in old albums, in almost every room, and in the dark corners of the crawl space under our house–a place I won’t visit unless it’s entirely necessary. 

I ended up placing old photos, clippings, and about seventy-five letters spanning fifty years into plastic sleeves in a leather album for them. Without a doubt, letters that both my brother and sister-in-law had written to me were the heart of the collection. Here in their own words were the everyday happenings and the special things that filled their lives and those of their five children as they moved between three states and three foreign countries. We were all amazed at how much of their history I’d saved!

My search for the perfect anniversary gift took me on a sentimental journey. I found boxes with long-forgotten letters that my mother had saved, many from writers who are gone now. The letters left behind are the only way future generations will know them. In one letter, I found the feelings of a homesick bride writing home to family living 2,000 miles away. There were many messages of congratulations marking the birth of a child, a graduation, or some other achievement. There was also the very moving letter of a father grieving over the loss of his son in World War I. 

Another father poured out his thoughts as he wrote to his wife trying to console her that they would get through their young son’s bout with meningitis. The husband wrote to his wife in Texas from where he worked in a remote mountain village in Mexico. His frustration that he was not there to help her through this emergency showed through every line in the letter as he searched for the fastest way to get news from her, and to get home to help her. It’s amazing how much of a person’s character shows through in a few lines. He ended his letter: “Please, Darling, do not let this blow get you down but say a prayer and remember that whatever happens, it is God’s will, and we must ask Him for grace and strength to bear up under it. We must remember that in all our years of married life, this is really the first time we have had any real serious sickness in the family and we cannot expect to go through our entire life without some trial. I would rather see the children have physical sickness than moral sickness. I want to get busy and finish up my monthly report so as to have it off my chest and then will be ready to leave here at a few minutes notice if you need me.” (The young boy did survive; he lived to the age of seventy.) 

In an age when it’s all too convenient to spill thoughts into a quickly forgotten te lephone conversation or in an instantly deleted e-mail, real letters seem to be vanishing from our culture. Letters from the past provide incredible insights, and sometimes the dose of courage and inspiration we need to carry on in our own lives. Hopefully, our generation will recognize their importance and power, and find the time to write and to save letters–even if only in the form of an e-mail or year-end wrap-up of family news sent with holiday greetings. For in them, future generations will find our stories. Letters are eyewitness accounts of our personal and collective history that will be forever lost if you and I don’t do something about it.