Dan Allosso
As
I was doing research toward my dissertation in Ashfield, Massachusetts,
last year, I came across a series of family letters written by a set of
eight brothers (they had one sister, but she apparently wrote no
letters). The Ranney brothers were all born between 1812 and 1833 in Ashfield, but all
of them except the third son Henry went west—some farther than
others. They wrote each other regularly for more than fifty years, and
over a hundred of their letters are preserved at the Ashfield Historical Society. The collection probably includes most of the letters Henry Sears
Ranney received from his brothers (he was apparently a very meticulous
record-keeper, and served as Ashfield’s Town Clerk for fifty years!),
but not all. For example, there is no mention
of the death at age 25 of younger brother Lyman, who was working for a
merchant in Tahlequah and had written several letters home with
interesting observations of the South and the Indian Nation. And
unfortunately the collection does not include copies of letters Henry
wrote. That’s unfortunate, but not unexpected. Although blotter-books
were widely used in this period to make copies of handwritten letters,
this practice was usually reserved for business correspondence.
A
collection of a hundred family letters spanning half a century is
treasure for a historian interested in the lives of regular people.
Because the writers were all brothers, there is
very little time wasted on empty formality—they get right to the point
and write about what’s most important to the family. Reading the
letters, we get a rare glimpse at the interests and concerns of a fairly
normal American family, as they experienced life in the nineteenth
century.
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