Letter from 'Minnie' to 'little Mary Anne' for her eighth birthday, page 2 (of 3)

Middle sheet of the three-part birthday letter begun on page 426 and concluded on page 427 (signed ‘Minnie’). Continues without break from the previous sheet’s last word (‘I [|] remember’). The writer recalls choosing ‘poor little Ted Parker’ as her supper companion at her own eighth-birthday party — ‘a gentle simple-minded boy, not like other boys but simple-minded’ — because she knew no one else would want him; then mentions that ‘Ted’ (a present-day Ted, evidently a small visitor) has just gone off with a basket of blackberries. The writer is Mary Anne Perry FitzSimons (‘Minnie’, 1859–1934). The ‘Ted Parker’ of the reminiscence is a child at Minnie’s own 1867 birthday party in the Lowcountry and is unrelated to either Ted Green (Nancy McEwan’s 1968 husband) or any later family Ted. The unnamed ‘Ted’ bringing blackberries in the closing sentence is presumably a neighbour child or young grandchild, but is not further identified in the surviving sheets.

The page breaks mid-sentence. The letter concludes on page 427, signed “Minnie.” The “Ted Parker” recalled here was a child at Mary Anne Perry FitzSimons’s own eighth-birthday party in 1867, in or near Charleston. The “Ted” in the closing sentence is a present-day visitor (1926), unnamed beyond the given name; the closing page 427 describes a similar small visitor bringing potatoes — apparently the same child but never further identified.