Letter from T. E. Osborne to Miss Ellen M. FitzSimons (Horse Shoe, NC, 24 July 1945)
Book 1, Page 282 ·1945
Transcription
Letter — T. E. Osborne to Miss Ellen M. FitzSimons
Horse Shoe, N.C. July 24, 1945.
Miss Ellen M. FitzSimons, Charleston, S.C.
Dear Miss Ellen.
Writing to thank you sometime ago for your sympathy in our loss, I failed to say something about your mother and your brother Christopher. During my life I never was thrown with a man I thought more of than I did of Christopher FitzSimons. He always encouraged and helped me, and his keen observation and knowlege of life enabled him to do so.
And your good mother, allowed me to almost raise a large family of children in her home, which could not help but be trying to her.
I know you will overlook my disturbing you and I do not want you to give it thought except I wanted you to know how I still appreciate those splendid favors that took place many years ago. With kind regards from my wife & myself — Sincerely, T. E. Osborne
AI Notes
A single sheet of letter paper, written in dark blue ink in a confident slanting hand, headed Horse Shoe, N.C., July 24, 1945, addressed to Miss Ellen M. FitzSimons, Charleston, S.C. The writer (T. E. Osborne) thanks her belatedly for sympathy in ‘our loss’, recalls her late mother and brother Christopher FitzSimons, and credits both with kindness during a long acquaintance. Signed at the bottom: T. E. Osborne. Some words wrap awkwardly at the right edge of the sheet. The recipient ‘Miss Ellen M. FitzSimons’ is Ellen Milliken FitzSimons (‘Aunt Ellen’, 1865–1953); her late brother ‘Christopher’ is Christopher FitzSimons Jr. ‘Kit’ (d. 1925), president of the Southern Cotton Oil Company; her late mother is Susan Milliken Barker FitzSimons (widow of Dr. Christopher FitzSimons 3rd). The ‘long acquaintance’ and the writer’s reference to having been allowed to ‘almost raise a large family of children in her home’ suggest Osborne and his wife had once boarded with the FitzSimons family in Charleston, perhaps when his children were small. The closing signature reads simply ‘T. E. Osborne’; the writer was a resident of Horse Shoe, NC, a small Henderson County community west of Hendersonville.