Letter from Margaret Pritchard Martin to Amy, May 3, 1962 (continuation page with letterhead)
Book 1, Page 230 ·1962
Transcription
A handwritten sheet on personal letterhead reading Mrs. Charles Franklin Martin / 3219 Heyward Street / Columbia, South Carolina. Written in blue ink. The body picks up mid-sentence from a previous sheet.
by the Francis Simmons family with whom he was connected. If you are interested in the other side I will be glad to send that too. It was never published. The State kept it for months until I went down & asked for it. I suppose they did not want to offend the Lowndes
AI Notes
Another sheet (with printed letterhead at top) from the multi-page handwritten letter from Margaret Pritchard Martin (Mrs. Charles Franklin Martin) of 3219 Heyward Street, Columbia, South Carolina, to Amy. The text picks up mid-sentence with reference to the Francis Simmons family connection, an offer to send the other side of the story, and a remark that her account was never published — The State held it for months until she went down and asked for it. Continues onto the next page with a reference to not wanting to offend the Lowndes.
Letter continues on the next page.
The “Francis Simmons family” version is the alternate Charleston tradition Martin would publish as “The Fateful Handkerchief” in Charleston Ghosts (USC Press, 1963) — the story of Francis Simmons (1762–1841), the Stono planter who took offense at his bride Ruth Lowndes’s dropped handkerchief on their wedding morning and never spoke to her again. The “Lowndes side” she means is the version the bride’s family preferred; the Simmons-Heyward side is the one Martin eventually printed.