Letters

Helen “Ella” Augusta (Wood) and Albert Jackson “Bert” Stage were my great-grandparents. They came from farmers and domestics but were literate, and we are lucky that someone decided to hold on to some of their letters.

The originals passed to their eldest daughter, Tessie Viola (Stage) Darcy, then to her eldest daughter, Dorothy (Darcy) Thurston.

At some point, my mom, Beatrice Helen (Ruppel) Shengulette — first cousin to Dorothy — took up the mantle of family genealogist and acquired transcriptions of the letters. I have converted those copies to HTML and added inline notes to clarify who’s who with the benefit of the internet and the sleuthing skills of my wife, Kathy.

My mom and grandmother knew many of these people personally and provided many notes. Sadly, Nellie (Stage) Ruppel passed in the mid-70s and my mom passed in 2015.

The first two entries in the list predate the others by 20 years. These were letters from Helen’s father (Samuel T. Wood) to Helen’s mother (Mary Elizabeth Ganoung Wood). Samuel was a latecomer to the Civil War, but while enlisted he contracted an illness that led to his death before Helen was born. Mary submitted his letters to a broker, and we later recovered them via military records requests.

People Mentioned in Letters

Letters Archive