Letter from Ellen M. FitzSimons to Amy, Dec. 9, 1948 (page 1 of 2)
Book 1, Page 497 ·1948
Transcription
4 Savage St Charleston S.C.
Dec. 9, 1948
Dear Amy:
That was a lovely letter that you wrote me and I especially liked what you said about your dear father.
You and Minnie have always seemed like Louisa’s sisters, & her happiest days were spent on the Plantation with you.
I am glad that Anne & Pickens have enjoyed the contact with Sam Stoney. He is gifted as he spoke to me of his pleasure in meeting them. Sam is all right when he is not trying to prove that his Smythe ancestors who “intermarried with Adgers” did what others (Stoneys & FitzSimons etc.) did! He wants to say that my father changed the name of his Back River plantation to “Blue Ruin” — that was the name of the California Stoneys’ (cousin Tom Stoney’s) place. Father gave to his place the name Latonia because his life while studying (at the Sorbonne) with Dr. Huger & keeping house with him first in Paris & afterwards at the University of Dublin was so happy over
AI Notes
A single sheet of plain writing paper dated ‘Dec. 9, 1948’ with ‘4 Savage St / Charleston / S.C.’ at the upper left. Written in blue ink in cursive. Letter from Aunt Ellen FitzSimons defending the FitzSimons family against Sam Stoney’s claim that intermarriage with Africans was unique to his Smythe ancestors (intermarried with Adgers), and recounting Ellen’s father’s renaming of the Back River plantation. Continues on page 498. Page shows fold-creases and a small tear at the right edge. ‘gifted as he spoke to me of his pleasure / in meeting them’ (not ‘in his speech & me / writing of them’); ‘Smythe ancestors’ (not Singleton); ‘intermarried with Adgers’ (not ‘Africans’); ‘Dr. Huger’ (not Hager) per album-wide watch list; ‘Blue Ruin’ (not Resin) is the better letter-by-letter reading though uncertain; ‘(at the Sorbonne)’ (not ‘for the Sorbonne’).
Letter continues on page 498.
“Sam Stoney” is the Charleston historian and author Samuel Gaillard Stoney (1891–1968), a FitzSimons kinsman through his mother Louisa Cheves Stoney. The “Dr. Huger” who studied medicine alongside Ellen’s father Dr. Christopher FitzSimons (3rd) was a member of the Charleston Huger family, with whom Christopher kept house first in Paris (at the Sorbonne medical school) and afterward in Dublin during the late 1860s and early 1870s. The reference to the Stoneys’ “intermarriage with Adgers” points to the Adger family of Charleston — Scots-Irish merchants and planters — not a slur on lineage; Ellen’s irritation here is a small flash of the competitive Charleston genealogy that ran through the postbellum families.