Letter from Mamie Simonds inviting Amy to the Simondses' golden wedding, Charleston, c. December 1944
Book 2, Page 200 ·1944
Transcription
A sheet of printed personal stationery, head printed in blue. The body of the letter is in shaky blue-ink cursive in Mamie Simonds’s hand.
[Printed letterhead, centred:]
MRS. LOUIS D. SIMONDS 48 Meeting St. Charleston, S. C.
[Body, in cursive:]
Dear Amy,
Would it be possible for you to be with us on Monday night — Dec. 11th — our golden wedding day. The children are having a family gathering with a few other friends and as many of our bridesmaids & groomsmen as we can get together. You & Helen Simons were the flower girls. I met Harry Parker today & she said to tell you to spend the night with her. Do try to come. Let her know & let me know what train & some one will meet you.
Love
Mamie Simonds
AI Notes
A single sheet of personal stationery, the head printed in blue “MRS. LOUIS D. SIMONDS / 48 Meeting St. / Charleston, S. C.”. Written in a flowing but somewhat shaky blue-ink cursive and signed Mamie Simonds. Addressed “Dear Amy” — the compiler. Mamie invites Amy to be in Charleston Monday night, Dec. 11th, the Simondses’ golden wedding day; the Simonds children are hosting a family gathering “with a few other friends and as many of our bridesmaids & groomsmen as we can get together”; Amy and Helen Simons [sic for Simonds] were the flower girls. Mamie has run into Harry Parker in Charleston that day, who has offered to put Amy up for the night. The letter asks Amy to let Harry Parker know she is coming and to let Mamie know the train so someone can meet her. The letter is undated but Dec. 11 falls on a Monday in 1944 (also fitting the album’s surrounding 1944 Portsmouth-letters cluster), giving a wedding date of December 11, 1894 — fifty years earlier.
The letterhead reads “MRS. LOUIS D. SIMONDS” — Louis D. Simonds was a Charleston man whose surname appears in the FitzSimons family’s Charleston circle (see also Charles R. Simonds on p320, an unrelated 1980 Charleston bank director). The flower girls are Amy (the compiler, b. 1888, age 6 in 1894 — plausible flower-girl age) and Helen Simonds (the writer spells “Simons” in cursive but the family name is Simonds). The album’s adjacent 1944 Portsmouth letters and the calendar position of Dec. 11 / Monday fix the year unambiguously as 1944.
The printed letterhead unambiguously reads “MRS. LOUIS D. SIMONDS” — Louis D. Simonds, a Charleston man whose 1894 marriage to “Mamie” the writer is the occasion of this 1944 anniversary invitation. The “Helen Simons” of the flower-girls line is written by Mamie without the medial “d”, but the family name on the letterhead is “Simonds”; metadata lists her as Helen Simonds. Amy FitzSimons Walker would have been six years old when she served as a flower girl at the 1894 wedding; she is fifty-six when the letter is written.