Letter from Susan M. FitzSimons to Mr. Osborne (Columbia, October 22nd) — page 1: news of Gaillie's recovery
Book 1, Page 283 ·1880–1895
Transcription
Letter — Columbia, October 22nd, from Susan M. FitzSimons to Mr. (Thomas E.) Osborne
Columbia Oct 22nd
Dear Mr. Osborne
I was very glad to hear of that little girl and would like to know what you have named her? — I am glad also to tell you that Gaillie is fast getting strong he has gained flesh rapidly since we got to Columbia & has a fine appetite for all his meals but still eats no meat at all. His limbs were very stiff from lying nearly three months in bed — & he still goes up & down stairs with
AI Notes
First page of a four-page handwritten letter from Susan M. FitzSimons to Mr. (Thomas E.) Osborne, the family’s tenant farmer at Mills River, Henderson County, N.C. Continues onto pp. 284, 285 and is signed ‘Susan M. FitzSimons’ on p. 286. Headed ‘Columbia / Oct 22nd’ with a pencilled ‘2nd’ superscript (the salutation ‘Dear Mr. Osborne’ is in the same hand). Susan reports glad news of Osborne’s newborn baby girl and updates him on the recovering health of her son ‘Gaillie’ — Gaillard Stoney FitzSimons (b. Oct 1864, the compiler Amy’s father). He has been bedridden nearly three months but is gaining flesh in Columbia and now goes up and down stairs unaided. The page ends mid-sentence. Writer identified by signature on p. 286 as Susan Milliken Barker FitzSimons; recipient identified as Thomas E. Osborne (same Osborne family who in 1918 bought Aunt Ellen’s Mills River farm — see pp. 287–288 — and whose son T. E. Osborne wrote to Aunt Ellen in 1945, p. 282). Date: Gaillie b. Oct 1864; Susan d. 14 Dec 1900; she also says she herself has ‘had to give up’ hope of getting up, so likely her final years — best estimate ca. 1880s–early 1890s.
Letter continues on p. 284.