My Darling Emma 1857

Welcome to... My Darling Emma 1857 If you are NEW HERE be sure to read the beginning of the journey I am on transcribing my family's 19th century letter collection! The Pidgeon surname in my letter collection are from Emma’s maternal side of the family tree. Emma’s mother, Susan Garretson Pidgeon  was the daughter of Issac E. Pidgeon, a farmer (1791-1879) and Mary Saunders (1790-1872) who resided in Fredrick   C ounty , Virginia . Emma's grandpa Issac  was born in York , Pennsylvania to a well known  Quaker family who would eventually relocate to Virginia . At some point, it seems grandpa  Issac's  parents left the church as I did not continue to see them mentioned in Meeting minutes AND grandpa  Issac  himself  is buried in a Methodist cemetery...      I should add a note here that Emma herself IS buried in a Quaker cemetery - Hopewell Friends Burial Grounds in Clear Brook, Virginia to be exact, but she had marr...

Welcome to... My Darling Emma 1857 If you are NEW HERE be sure to read the beginning of the journey I am on transcribing my family's 19th century letter collection! Mary signed her letter "Eva" 🥀   Mary Elizabeth Davis   🥀 (1834-1891) Next on the list of letter writers in my collection I want to tell yall about is Emma's Aunt Mary.  She   signed her letters " Eva" and sometimes signed off as  Aunt   Mary .  She married Emma’s maternal uncle  Issac Pidgeon (yes anotoher isaac)  in 1859 when she was 25 years old . I f you have been paying attention to  this blog  - 1857 was the year Emma  (my 2nd great grandma) was born... Aunt Mary  was the daughter of Joseph Harrison Davis  a Virginian farmer (1811-1872) and Sarah Matilda Windle (1814-1892.)  Mary  was the oldest out of the nine children in the Davis household.  Mary’s letters were written much later in her life, way past the days of her c...

Welcome to... My Darling Emma 1857 If you are NEW HERE be sure to read the beginning of the journey I am on transcribing my family's 19th century letter collection! I can't believe how much I've learned in all these months of transcribing my ancestors correspondences just by jumping in there (sittin rather) and doing it! Recently I stumbled across some lectures on You-Tube explaining how to better read/transcribe 19th century documents like I have. Not sure why I didn't think of looking for something like this MONTHS ago, but here we are.  Something I noticed right away into reading the letters, they didn't put words together like we do nowadays. An example is cannot/can not or someone/some one and ones I found a lil annoying when reading were to day/today or  a bout/about or my self/myself.            Numerous times I found myself fighting with spellcheck (or “spell check” if I was writing this 200 years ago.) I don’t turn it off be...