Description:

Victorian America

Victorian archive of 36 courtship letters from the son of Confederate Major Daniel N. Speer to his fiancée in post-Civil War Victorian times


Archive of 36 handwritten letters, 33 of them from the son of Daniel N. Speer, Will Speer, who was an assistant to his father at the Exposition Cotton Mills. Will Speer was courting Katie Silvey in November and December 1889 when she traveled to New York with her mother to select her wedding trousseau. Three of the letters were written to the fiancée by Daniel N. Speer. During the couple's separation, Will Speer wrote a succession of letters providing insight into the rituals of Victorian courtship.



Thinking of Katie’s departure, Will wrote: "the agony of that parting, it did seem that my very life would cease to be, when you left me. Don’t you remember Darling our last embrace, how sweet it was to press you to my heart, but how bitter... the thought that soon you would leave me alone and desolate. And when I left you the night before my poor heart was bleeding and it seemed that I could not leave you, no, not for an hour or a moment, never can I forget our walk and our wait at the depot -- how I wished that they would never end ... "



As the hours rolled into days, he continued in the same vein:



"I awoke to the sad reality that mile upon mile divided us...It is early in the morning, my gas jet is burning and in its shadow I am sitting writing to my darling so far away... Darling I am miserable beyond degree."



Most letters are written on letterhead of the Exposition Cotton Mills, a business started by Daniel N. Speer with eighteen other investors. Within its first decade, the Exposition Cotton Mills Co. became the South's largest cotton mill. The mill was demolished in 1971.


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