Letter from Thomas Perry Baker to Amy Walker, Sept. 10, 1940 (page 1)
Book 1, Page 388 ·1940
Transcription
Letterhead printed at the top center:
WOOD GROVE FARM JERSEY, VIRGINIA
Dated at the upper right in ink:
Sept. 10th 1940 –
Body, in dark ink in a shaky cursive hand:
My dear Miss Amy —
Of course I remember both you & Mr. Walker with the fondest recollections, & the lapse of many years has not dimmed the memory of that most pleasant occasion — Oct. 20 – 1908 — the record of which I have in my Diary —
I cannot understand why the Record of the Church have been so neglected — All my official acts were duly recorded by Mr. John Wilson who kept the books & I knew he was most faithful — I expect to be in Adams [Run] …
AI Notes
First page of a three-page letter (pages 388–390) on Wood Grove Farm letterhead, written by the Rev. Thomas Perry Baker to Amy Walker (née FitzSimons) on September 10, 1940. The letter accompanies his certification (page 386) of the Walkers’ 1908 marriage and explains that Baker is supplying the certification because the church records of his ministry at Adams Run had been neglected. The hand is shaky and uneven; the writer was elderly. The ink has bled and the page is foxed. [confirmed the date ‘Sept. 10th / 1940 –’ (superscript ‘th’); resolved ‘Mr. John Wilson’ (the parish clerk who kept the books) — the existing reading was correct but bracketed as conjectural and is now confirmed via high-resolution crops. The opening fragment ending the page reads ‘I expect to be in Adams [Run]’ — continued on page 389 as ‘longer toward the last of this month’.]
The letter continues onto page 389. “Mr. John Wilson” is the parish clerk Baker employed during his ministry as Rector of Christ Church Parish at Adams Run, S.C., whose records would have included the entry of the Walker–FitzSimons marriage of October 20, 1908.