Cursive letter, 'Sunday' — 'Dear Minnie' from Mary forwarding Sam III's buy-out letter (pages 371–373)

Scanned page 374 of Book 1 — Scan of original. Open full size →

A single sheet of cream paper in blue cursive, heavily revised and overwritten. Dated only “Sunday —”; the letter continues on page 375.

Dear Minnie — Sunday —

I feel ashamed when I don’t write you more often. Where time goes, I don’t know. Sam, Janice & Bo were here a week with us, & it was wonderful. Little Bo is precious & ~~the~~ only word he says is “cooky,” & when your hand goes up for one or the other — I missed them so so badly when they left. Am sending you the letter I received from Sam Fri., I had no idea that he was anticipating this but he told [Jed?] not to tell me until he made his decision. I didn’t sleep very good Fri. night — wondering if he is doing the right thing but Sam is a level-headed boy & I know he will work hard to make a success. It is a heating & air conditioning business. They found out Mr. [Coopradt?] has a heart murmur & I think he’d like to retire. It will really be wonderful to have [continues on page 375]

AI Notes

First sheet of a two-page cover letter (concludes on page 375) in blue-ink cursive — heavily overwritten, with several phrases struck through. Dated “Sunday —” at the upper right and beginning “Dear Minnie.” The writer is Mary Haddow FitzSimons — widow of Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons Jr. (d. 17 Oct 1961, p367), mother of Sam III — the same hand as the Friday “Dear Amy” letter on pages 369–370. The addressee “Minnie” is Mary Annie FitzSimons Allston (“the younger Minnie,” Amy and Sam Jr.'s sister, m. Donald Alston of Johns Island, S.C., named in Sam Jr.'s p367 obituary as “Mrs. Donald Alston”). Mary reports that Sam, Janice and “little Bo” have just spent a week with her; describes Bo’s only word (“cooky”) and how she missed them when they left; and encloses the letter she received from Sam the previous Friday (i.e., the Tuesday letter on pages 371–373) in which Sam announced his decision to leave I.P. for Janice’s father’s heating-and-air-conditioning business in Panama City. She closes the page mid-sentence (“It will really be wonderful to have …”) — continued on page 375. writer attributed and surname canonicalized to Mary Haddow FitzSimons; recipient identified as Mary Annie FitzSimons Allston (the younger Minnie — disambiguated from the elder Minnie / Mary Anne Perry FitzSimons who died in 1934); “Mr. Cooperath” preserved as best-guess uncertain reading Mr. [Coopradt?] of Janice’s father’s surname (per the p371 letter, he was diagnosed with the heart trouble that prompted the buy-out offer); “anticipating this but he told [Jed?]” — the capitalised intermediary’s name is most plausibly “Jed” (or possibly “Ted”) and is preserved with an uncertainty marker; the body now treats this as one coherent run-on draft rather than inserting silent corrections.