Folded letter sheet showing the address panel — Mr. Samuel G. Barker, Charleston, S.C.

Scanned page 82 of Book 1 — Scan of original. Open full size →

The outer panel of a once-folded letter sheet, now opened flat for the album. The address is written in brown ink across the centre, in the bold, sloping hand of the Rev. James Warley Miles. A small red wax seal survives at the lower edge, and a faint round stain at upper left marks where a postal label or other adhesive once sat. In the compiler Amy FitzSimons Walker’s much later, lighter pencil, a small annotation is squeezed between the addressee’s name and the city below, identifying the recipient as her own ancestor.

Mr. Samuel G. Barker

[pencilled beneath, in the compiler’s hand]: — my great gan father — A.F.W.

Charleston S.C.

AI Notes

The outer (address) panel of the folded-sheet letter whose body is on pages 078–081 — Rev. James Warley Miles’s commentary to Samuel Gaillard Barker on Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. The address is written in brown ink across the centre of the panel; a small red wax seal survives at the lower edge. In her later hand, the compiler Amy FitzSimons Walker has pencilled an annotation beneath the addressee’s name identifying Sam’l G. Barker as her paternal great-grandfather (signing the note with her initials ‘A.F.W.’). Several horizontal and vertical creases from the original folding pattern are visible, as is a faded round paper-stain at upper left (probably an adhesive ghost from a postal label). The 1850–1860 date_range matches the dated body letter on pp078–081.

The pencilled note — “my great gan father” — is Amy FitzSimons Walker’s familiar shorthand for “great-grandfather.” Samuel Gaillard Barker (1799–1863) was indeed her paternal great-grandfather: Sam’l’s daughter Susan Milliken Barker married Dr. Christopher FitzSimons (3rd) — the doctor killed in the 1866 Cooper River tornado — and their son Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons Sr. (b. 1856) was Amy’s father, and Amy was b. 4 Feb 1888. The body of this letter — Miles’s discussion of Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound — is on pages 078–081.