In presenting and transcribing these letters, I’ve adopted a number of conventions.
- I haven’t changed any spellings or misspellings. These are part of the fabric of the letters.
- I haven’t modified any syntax, grammar, or sentence structure, even though I was tempted a few times. I believe that presenting the original structure is important and part of the sense of the letters.
- I’ve included the envelopes, to give the reader a sense of how the letters first presented to the recipient…the stamps, the return address, etc. Whenever something was written on the back of an envelope, I’ve provided a view of the back.
- I’ve tried to use the actual date the letter was written, if I can identify it. If not, then I used the date of the postmark to label these letters. Sometimes the postmark correlates with the date the letter was written, but more often the postmark was the following day.
He misspelled some words consistently throughout his letters, while other words were initially misspelled, and later spelled correctly. For example, “Santa Anna” from his earlier letters later changed to “Santa Ana”.
Tom was left-handed, and family oral tradition is that there was an attempt made to train him to write right-handed, without success. Oral tradition also holds that during this right-handed training, he began to stutter when speaking. When the attempts to convert him into a right-handed writer ceased, the stuttering disappeared.
His left-handed writing is unimportant, except to note that for him to write cursive with the forward slant displayed in his letters, he would need to rotate the writing paper at least 45 degrees clockwise, to avoid smearing the ink from the words he’s just written with his hand.
His cursive is distinct and closely resembles his sister’s handwriting (my mother), although his sister was right handed.
The internet is an amazing research tool. Many bits of information I’ve gleaned in my contextual comments came from original documents traced through the internet. If I were to have attempted to research these people, places and things 20 years ago, it would have been much more difficult, if even possible.
Michael Hughey, MD