Letter from John McCready FitzSimons to his aunt Ellie, Hendersonville, N.C., Aug. 12, 1948 — sheet 2

Second sheet of the August 12, 1948 letter from John McCready FitzSimons (Hendersonville, N.C.) to his aunt Ellie (Ellen Milliken FitzSimons, Charleston). Same Barrovian Lodge stationery, same pencil hand. John reports that “Ellen, Jr.” is leaving New York on her vacation the 15th and expects to see Ellie on the 16th for a couple of days, then come on up to Hendersonville. John thinks Ellen Jr. is going to stay with Marguerite if not at a hotel. A new paragraph begins about Louisa (the writer’s sister Louisa de Berniere FitzSimons — same as the recipient of the 1918 Halifax letter at p. 446) and “the change in her office and the change of the administration,” continuing off the bottom of this sheet onto p. 519.

“Ellen, Jr.” is a younger Ellen — most likely a niece. The Ellen FitzSimons appearing in this period as a separate vacationing person from New York is not yet definitively identified against the family tree; entered here as “Ellen FitzSimons Jr.” per the writer’s own designation. (She is distinct from the recipient Aunt Ellie, the Charleston Library Society Librarian, who by 1948 was in her late eighties.) “Marguerite” is preserved as the bare-name family placeholder used elsewhere in this album (cf. pp. 032, 208, 356, 474, 495, 516, 532, 599); from the context of an Ellen Jr. stopover en route from New York to Charleston/Hendersonville, this is likely a Charleston-resident family member rather than Margarita Kershaw FitzSimons of Hendersonville. “Louisa” is Louisa de Berniere FitzSimons, the writer’s other sister and recipient of the 1918 Halifax letter, who held an office position affected by an administration change (likely the 1948 Truman-era federal personnel turnover, given the matching dating).

Continues on page 519.