Below are two scanned jpegs of a letter that was written by my great, great, grandmother, Margaret (Smith) Morgan, to her future husband, Robert Morgan while he was a union soldier, with the Calvary, during the American Civil War. Margaret was a school teacher. I have transcribed the letter exactly as she wrote it. You will notice, that even for a school teacher, her lack of punctuation and the habit of writing words together is throuhout her letter.
Robert Morgan could neither read or write, at the time. It was only "educated" men that were entitled to become officers. Because of this, the other enlisted men would bring a letter they had recieved to an officer so that it could be read. As with the envelope seen on the Morgan Family Photo Page,(addressed to Margaret Smith) some officers were kind enough to sit down and write back what an enlisted man dictated.
The letter is written in the old time style of "propriety" but as you read you will get the "gist" of what Margaret is trying to tell Robert. |
