Leonard Family Legends and Legacies » letters

Salvage old documents

Rick@Leonard Family Legends & Legacies — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:51:08 +0000

How many times have you stumbled across an old box of pictures, letters, or documents only to find them too brittle to handle? If you haven’t yet, believe me, you will and then what do you do?

The basic problem with old documents, especially those stored in low-humidity environments like an attic, is that the paper itself dries out and becomes brittle. Just opening a document or newspaper article can destroy it. Photos, in particular, should never be unfolded or uncurled without some TLC. And by TLC, I mean archival gloves at the very least, and the use of a do-it-yourself humidification chamber if you have any hope at all of salvaging something usable.

You can buy humidification chambers at archival supply stores, but who’s got one of those in the neighborhood? And besides, you’ll pay through the nose, i.e. several hundred dollars, for the privilege.

You can build your own humidification from basic plastic storage containers, light grids, and a few Tupperware containers. The chamber needs to be large enough to hold the documents in question, but those stackable containers we all hide our Christmas ornaments in should be about right (aprox. 2x2x3 feet with a lid).

Next, you’ll need a “shelf” on which to place the dehydrated pictures or documents. I prefer to use the plastic lighting grids you typically find covering fluorescent light fixtures set into the ceiling. These are available at most hardware or Home Depot/Lowes stores and can be cut to size roughly 18×28 inches. You might also use metal screen or “chicken wire” as long as it lies flat. The shelf should be a couple of inches narrower on each side than the chamber itself.

Next, set the “shelf” on four or five Tupperware containers in the bottom of the chamber. Any support will work, as long as its waterproof, because the last step is to pour 1-2 inches of water in the bottom of the chamber. NOTE: Find a suitable location where the humidification chamber might sit for a day or two before you pour any water. That’s how long the documents/chamber will have to sit without being bumped or jostled.

Finally, after pouring the water, making sure not to get any on the shelf itself, place your pictures or documents on the shelf just as you found them and carefully snap the lid on the chamber.

Monitor the progress every twelve hours or so until the documents once again become flexible, but never wet enough to feel wet. Rolled documents like maps will generally start to unroll on their own, but you want the paper flexible enough to flatten without breaking.

Once the papers are flexible enough to flatten, its best if you place them between two sheets of plotter paper and lay some books or a sheet of plexiglass on top to complete the flattening. Give it another 12-24 hours and voila! You’ve got something worth saving!

Now, if none of this makes any sense, you can watch a YouTube video of the whole process right here:

I know, I could’ve started with the video and saved all that reading, but what fun is that?

Happy salvaging!

Dispatch from Leonard, Iowa

Rick@Leonard Family Legends & Legacies — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:34:23 +0000

Early on in my family history research, I had the impression that my great-great-grandfather was either estranged from his birth family or completely cut off from the civilized world. That impression was based on the lack of evidence that they had communicated or visited one another.

Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong, as demonstrated by the following letter mailed from Leonard, Iowa (the post office named in Uncle Dan’s honor) to the editor of the Adams County (Iowa) Free Press:

Leonard, Iowa
March 3rd, 1901
Mr. Editor: This will be my report of our late visit in Pennsylvania and Ohio. (Home to five of his eight siblings.)

Our first notable observation was to find it snowing in Marion County, Ohio, (home of brother James Herron Leonard) with good sleighing, and hauling logs to the sawmills was the principal occupation of all we saw at work. Timber seems at this season of the year to be the only product moving. We saw the watereim (?) logs hauled to the hoop factory, as well as the monster oaks fifty feet in length used in ship building. Our Iowa boys have no conception of their greatness. I was surprised to see how scarce timber is becoming.

It was noticeable to miss the herds of cattle as all were in barns if they had any. No straw or hay stacks; corn all cut up and in neat shocks, scarcely a corn crib to be seen, maybe they put it under the bed(?) as as they do in Pennsylvania.

Our first meal in Ohio was eaten in Bell Fountain in company with Mr. Devore’s(?) relations and consisted of buckwheat cakes, dairy butter, sugar maple ‘lasses, and the regular stuffed sausages. Ge whiz wasn’t they good. It was the first square meal we had had in forty years.

…to be continued…

Road trip – pioneer style

Rick@Leonard Family Legends & Legacies — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:54:43 +0000

Those of us of a certain age fondly recall the days of vacation or holiday “road trips.” In the days before the price of gasoline reached triple digits, i.e. when it cost less than a dollar a gallon, it wasn’t unheard of to drive for days on end to reach a particular destination.

Family road trips usually concluded at a relative’s house. Collegiate road trips often had no destination at all other than, uh, the open road.

Road trips came back to me as I read an open letter my great-great-grandfather had written to the local newspaper in 1901. He and his lovely wife had just returned to Iowa after visiting relatives in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Reflecting on my elementary school history lessons, I realized that 1901 was the very year Henry Ford built his first car. Knowing my g-g-grandfather most certainly wasn’t Ford’s first customer and local roads were barely fit for horses, I deduced that my g-g-granparents must’ve traveled by rail.

And so it was that I went off on another tangent and set out to see if I could determine which railroads they might’ve patronized. It turned out to be far easier than I would’ve thought. I found my answers in the handy-dandy Railroad Maps Collection at the Library of Congress. Go ahead. Click it. I’ll wait.

Back already? Very well, then, I can conclude by telling you my g-g-grandparents more than likely took the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy line from Corning, Iowa to Chicago. From there, they could’ve caught the CCC&StL (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis) train to Marion, Ohio and from there taken the Wheeling & Pittsburgh branch of the famous B&O (Baltimore & Ohio) Railroad to Washington County, Pennsylvania. Fascinating, no?

No more fascinating than the letter my g-g-grandfather wrote when he got back, but I’ve spent too much time explaining how my train of thought left its tracks to actually share the letter. Tune in again next week for the nitty-gritty of turn-of-the-century travel.

Cheers y’all!
Rick

Letters, pt. deux

Leonard Legends & Legacies — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:06:40 +0000

Time flies, and all that crap. And yes, I should’ve thought of a more creative title for “Letters, pt. deux.” Get over it.

When we last spoke, I promised to share a bit of what my g-g-grandfather had to say about his cabin, and the traffic that passed by the front of it. The cabin, as you might’ve guessed, is the very one pictured here, taken from the original painting (done from memory) in 1899.

I know these things, because the creation of this and the previously-mentioned painting were noted in the local newspaper:

“Uncle Dan Leonard has recently had a fine large picture (previous entry -ed.) of his Taylor county home painted which was on exhibition in the Shion drug store last Saturday and attracted much attention. Anyone who has ever partaken of Uncle Dan’s hospitality would at once recognize the beautiful home which he has builded (sic) for himself. Another smaller picture stood beside the large one. This was his first cabin erected in 1850. (actually 1856) The contrast is great.” (Duh)

-Adams County (Iowa) Free Press 14 Sept 1899

The artist’s name, BTW, was L. Berg. I’ve never seen another reference to him, but itinerant artists were commonplace in those days. If you ever run across him, please let me know. Now where was I?

Uncle Dan described his cabin, in his 1889 letter to his aunt (written ten years before the painting was done) as, “in its day the the finest residence for 12 years on a strip of land 16 miles long and 8 wide.”

Speaking of a photo he apparently enclosed, Uncle Dan drew attention to a horse on the road in front of his house… “a woe-begon moving family. Poor folks, they like hundreds of others had tryed (sic) Kansas and found it wanting and are pulling for their northern farms. Home.”

“Oh, I sometimes pity the poor slaves,” he continued, “the poor oppressed slaves that have left their eastern homes, came west to hunt a home and have been wandering those years and it seems as though they could not find any place to lay their head.” Uncle Dan wrote that note twenty-five years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

As a final, completely unrelated note of HUGE historical interest, at least to me, was one about recent events back “home” in Pennsylvania. The footnote was dated June 24th, 1889:

“Oh, what a calamity befell Johnstown and there is not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your father’s notice. Are you not of more value than many sparrows?”

Note for the non-native Pennsylvanian… On May 31, 1889, a neglect and a phenomenal storm led to a catastrophic dam failure outside of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. 2,209 people died in the ensuing flood.

Caveat emptor.

Letters from home

Leonard Legends & Legacies — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:07:08 +0000

When was the last time you sent or received a hand-written letter from a friend or relative? “Hand-written” rules out the annual word-processed Christmas “here’s my life in pastel colors” letter. “Letter” rules out the thank you note or get well card, although I can see either of those becoming an heirloom down the line.

No, I mean an honest-to-goodness, pass it around the coffee clatch letter from home? I’m ashamed to admit it’s been years. But a recently discovered letter, mailed in 1889, just might inspire me to write a few of my own. To wit…

My g-g-grandfather Uncle Dan Leonard, wrote an eight page letter to his aunt in 1889. Eight pages! To an aunt! That letter turned up in his brother’s Bible, so we know it was passed around the family long after it was sent. His brother Isaac saw fit to immortalize it in a book he knew would be kept. Perhaps best of all, it was mailed from Leonard, Iowa, a post office named for Uncle Dan and housed in a neighbor’s home just two miles to the south.

The salutation reads simply, “Dear Aunt.” Uncle Dan had three aunts, but the presumption is that he was writing to his Aunt Luzanna, who stayed in Pennsylvania with her aging mother when most of the family moved west to Ohio. He regrets that enough time has passed that it’s unlikely his aunt will ever get to visit him in his new Iowa home. So he sent pictures and rather verbose description of the property. (The pictures, apparently, have been misplaced.)

None of that would have been particularly remarkable, if not for the fact that the house he described in 1889 is still standing and occupied 120 years later. Uncle Dan commissioned a painting of the place ten years after he sent the letter. Side-by-side comparisons show how little it has actually changed.

As an extra-special treat to my family, Uncle Dan described the HUGE stone slab at the base of the front porch.

“If you look closely, you will see Mrs. Dan Leonard standing on a rock (sitting to the front and right of it in the painting) 9 inches thick, 8′ long and about 4′ wide, the largest stone in South Western Iowa and on said rock is inscribed as follows: Daniel and Jane Leonard 1856 (the year Dan and Jane settled in that very spot).”

That rock appears to be granite, and it’s still in place. It’s been a source of great curiosity in my family. My parents and I often wondered if there might be a time capsule of some sort underneath. We’ve offered, more than once, to pay the current owner for the stone and whatever may lie underneath, but to date, no deal. Below is a little closer look.

The letter goes on to describe a picture of the original log cabin that “was the finest residence for twelve years on a stretch of land 16 miles long and eight miles wide.” That picture was also a commissioned painting, drawn from the pioneer couple’s own memories.

This post is getting a tad long, so I’ll save more on that painting for next week. That, and Uncle Dan’s description of the poor souls passing along the trail in front of his house, dragging their meager possessions back from failed settlement attempts to the south and west in Kansas.

Your assignment, between now and next week… Go write a letter!