Episode 28 - The Quiet Tenor Of Our Lives

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 28 - “The Quiet Tenor Of Our Lives”
Published on February 1, 2022

Note: This transcript was generated by Otter.ai with light human correction

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, and welcome to Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant. This is a Women's History podcast where we feature eighteenth and early nineteenth century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host, Katherine Gehred. This week's guest is Allison Herring, a researcher who has begun a project called "In Search of the Powells," a Civil War Project centering on the papers of one Southern family. So welcome, Alison.

Alison Herring

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. I'm a fan of the podcast, it's been a lot of fun, but listen to other people who transcribe women's letters just like me. And even though you can't hear me, I'm geeking out as much about what you all are talking about, as you all are. So this is fine. So thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, I found you on Twitter, and I saw your website and I was like, this seems like a person who has shares our enthusiasm.

Alison Herring

Yes, I've probably transcribed three or 400 of the Powell women's letters so far. And so if each one of them, it's about four pages that's at least 1000. Well over 1000 pages so far. Yeah. So I've gotten to know them pretty well. And, that's I've done it a lot.

Kathryn Gehred

So I did see from your website that your professional background is actually in accounting and auditing. So how did this happen? How did you discover this family?

Alison Herring

First of all, one thing that's really interesting to point out is the accounting profession/audit, so I did audit, meaning I audited publicly traded companies for a big for public accounting firm, and history profession have a fair amount in common. Both are backwards looking at transactions or events that have already happened. Both are focused on heavily on the evidence, like what evidence exists to support this, you're trying to evaluate information that's been presented to you that may or may not be accurate, or may or may not be true. Both require a fair amount of skepticism, so they have a lot and you when you're presented with evidence, or you can't just take it at face value, you have to perform procedures on it to determine how reliable is this information, and how does it fit into the greater context. So audit is very similar to history. So I'm learned of these papers, when I was living in Dallas. I had had a family tragedy happened, we lost five immediate family members, or I'm sorry, three family members across five months. And I had just I don't think you and I had just moved to Dallas. So I didn't have the support system that you would normally have for a compounding loss like that, and I think the move made it worse. You know, I didn't have close friends yet or a church that was going to support me. So I didn't, and I was struggling to make friends because I didn't have normal answers to small talk questions at that time. And, so at about that time, William and Mary had some alumni in Dallas who held an event, and I was accepting all invitations, I needed friends. So, I went to the event, and they were hosting an event to teach about this transcription project that Swem library at William and Mary had where they had uploaded their Civil Rights Archive Online and the Civil War archives online for the 150th and 50th anniversaries of each. And I thought, all right, I can sign up for this. And, I can do this from my couch until the worst of the grief passes this seemed like a better use of my time than finding the end of Netflix. So, I could participate in something. And the job that I was doing at the time was we were our firm was going paperless. We were deploying a software that was representing a huge change. So, to participate in the digitization of this and the transcription of these documents fit well with what I was doing professionally at the time. And so ultimately, I was transcribing maybe one letter a week on the weekends. It's just something to do get my head out of myself. And, I transcribed my first letter from Hattie Lee Powell. She's one of the daughters. And she was very compelling. Her letter just stood out from all the others that I had transcribed. And she was going through the very similar circumstances to me, she was going through a compounding loss, she lost several family members, she and she was had lost her home and her career, and she was enduring this by herself among strangers, and so were her sisters. And, so the whole family were separated during the war, which is why they're such a huge collection of their letters, because that's how they stayed in touch for four years. So no two of them were together. So that was compelling to me, I thought, 'Oh, you're somebody who gets it.' Like she gets it. Yeah. And I understood what she was writing about, and I felt like if I instead of picking some random letter every week, if I stick with her, I'm gonna learn her handwriting, I'm gonna learn the context of what she's writing and my transcriptions are going to be more fun, they're probably going to be more accurate, and far more interesting. And then it became like reading a novel. Maybe you see this too, when you're transcribing these letters, you get to know these people. And you want to know, is the brother missing? Is he dead or alive? You know, what happens with the boyfriend? Does that work out or not? And who are these people? Or are they when they're writing these letters? And so I just kept going was a comment. Somebody on your podcast made a couple of episodes ago, she said, I just kept going and I identified with that. So, that's how it started, and it just grew from there.

Kathryn Gehred 

It's interesting how these pet projects start with like when you find that personal connection to it. That's that's a really cool story. Did you sort of read history on your own before this? Or is this really throw you into it?

Alison Herring

It threw me into it. I mean, I was always a, I loved studying it. We grew up in Arkansas, and my family took trips to Virginia every year, so and when we did that, we would visit these historic sites and museums, and so I really enjoyed that. And I loved my history classes when I was in middle school in high school, and I on purpose, took history classes in college, because I enjoyed it. So, I'd always been drawn to it but had pursued accounting as a career. So I never dreamed that I would do something like this it just was something that happened. It just fell out of the sky and is rooted in trauma, but has been a positive way to use my time. So, I've gotten to know this phenomenal Southern family, and fortunately, one of the families that they enslaved, I've been able to get to know them, too. And that's something that I appreciate about these women's letters. They mentioned the enslaved, they will talk about what they're doing during the day, or the husband is visiting, or a baby was born last night. And so there's details about their lives that get recorded and these women's letters. And it's interesting, the Powell men don't mention the enslaved very often. I wonder if it's a domestic thing.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah, I think I think it goes hand in hand with managing the household, which tells you a little bit about the gender roles of the time and the social roles of the time. But I've 100% noticed the same thing. If you want to find out more about what the slaves are doing at a household, you've got to look at the white women's letters.

Alison Herring

Yes, yes. Frtunate that she that they did write about the enslaved as much as they did, and that those letters survive, so that we can piece them together.

Kathryn Gehred

Tell me a little bit more about the Powells. Now that you've followed that lead and learn more about this family.

Alison Herring

They were an unconventional bunch. We'll see if you agree, I think they were they kind of challenged what I thought a family was and how people lived in the nineteenth century. So a very high level overview is your mom and dad Powell, Selena and Charles, got married in 1830. And so that's where my timeline begins. And they were living in Loudoun County, Virginia, for a couple of years. And then they decided, let's go to Louisville, Kentucky. And so they did in the 1830s. So, they hauled out the National Road and took a steamboat out to Kentucky, and they lived there for a couple of years and decided, nope, let's go back. So, they came right back to Loudoun County lived literally across the road from the where the farm was where they were living before. I lived there for a couple more years, then decided, let's go to Leesburg, Virginia, which is in the same county. So, then they moved to Leesburg for several years, and then they decided let's go to Henry, Illinois, and they did! So then they sold the people that they enslaved pulled out to Henry, Illinois. I lived there for a couple of years decided now let's go back to Virginia again. I mean, I just felt like they're constantly on the move, and they're constantly pivoting in their life. And I think so when they moved back to Virginia, they decided to open a boarding school for girls, and of all places on the eve of the Civil War, Winchester, which is not where you would want to open a school for girls on the eve of the Civil War, because since you're an 18th century person, Winchester changed hands the most number of times it was a warzone for four years. So they opened the school it was successful, but then it numbers of the elite women were starting to drop, and so then they were looking to move west again, they were looking to go to my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, but then the war hit. And, then when they fled Winchester and I would have thought a nineteenth century family would have hunkered down on a farm somewhere go to your aunt and uncle's. It's not what they did. They split across the state and lived separated from one another for the four, I guess for the three years they lived the first year up in Winchester, the women lived on their own and they supported themselves like a Jane Eyre in a war they got hired by these families who could afford to hire a woman and have her work in the household and teach the young children in the household. Sometimes if there was enough children in the neighborhood, one of the Powell daughters would form a school because she knew how to do that because she had been running helping fund this boarding school in Winchester, and the older daughters were teaching in the school. So they were not passive or just hanging out. They were actively participating in teaching. So they knew how to do this, and they didn't just stay in one place during the war, you think you'd find a place that's decently comfortable and to stay there but they wouldn't they would pick up and move and go somewhere else for the next year and then pick up a move and go somewhere else, and so they were just constantly on the move. And it just struck me that this felt different from what I thought a woman's life would have been in the nineteenth century, particularly during the war.

Kathryn Gehred

How does it change the way you think about Civil War history? Because generally when people think of women in the Civil War sort of Gone With the Wind type narrative pops up a lot. So what has it taught you about that time?

Alison Herring

I think that at least for the Powells, they were not as passive as I would have thought they would have been. Now some of their cousins had an experience that it mirrors what I would have assumed where they hunker down on a farm and endure the circumstances going on around them that they can't control as best as they can. Maybe what helped the Powells were they they didn't own any property. They had no they didn't have anywhere to hunkered down. So they had to flee. Their income dried up when the schools stopped operating because nobody wants to send their daughter to a school in a war zone and nor should you so the income dried up and they couldn't afford the rent on the building. I'm confident that's a big reason why they fled. It wasn't just fear of the conflict. It was well 'financially we can't pull this off anymore' because their school still stands and Winchester it's a huge building.

Kathryn Gehred

Oh, cool.

Alison Herring

Every place the Powell's lived so far still stands. It's like they were a 19th century good luck charm. If you took in a Powell in the Civil War, like your house is still standing. That's one of the pieces of this was when I moved back to Virginia from Dallas. I wanted to know where Hattie was, physically, because I really I didn't know, she didn't leave enough clues. So that took an enormous amount of effort, I frankly, had to switch over to genealogy of the family she was living with, we sat together and was able to realize, oh, she was in Brunswick County. And then later she was in Powhatan County and come to find out both homes are still standing. The one in Brunswick County is still owned by the same family that took her in as a war refugee during the war. So yeah, reaching out to them was big, because when I gave them copies, one of the things I do is I do it when I transcribe the letters, I'll put them together in a book and hand this book over with the permission of William and Mary, to the people who live and work on these properties today, so they can have an account of their house during the war that they would otherwise never know about. Because it was written down by a refugee teacher, that I don't know how you would ever know you had a refugee teacher at this house, and so with them, it was not just the history of the home that they own. It was their family that she's recording.

Kathryn Gehred

Wow!

Alison Herring

This project lives, it's among the living very much. I don't, it's I'm not just purely in the archives. I'm out in these counties, meeting the people who live and work in these spaces today. And letting them know that these papers exist and they record and accounts of what happened there. And they ought to know.

Kathryn Gehred 

There are a lot of them museums now are they still houses people live in for the most part?

Alison Herring

Still houses people live in. So, the school in Winchester is a bit it's been divided into two businesses, one parts a law office, the other part is a financial management and I was able to go in and see them they first they let me come in on a Friday. And the two companies took me around in the spaces. The attics are interesting, the rooms where the girls slept up in the attics are still there. And they're these little rooms with these little doors. And they had wondered what is this up here? Why are there all these little rooms with these doors, and I thought, I mean, hesitate to think about these girls sleeping up here in this attic, but I think that that's what this was, I think this was part of the dorm, because they had a lot of girls in that house and the home in Powhatan County is still lived in, and the guy who owns it, his family bought it from the people who lived there in 1880. So, it's been in his family since the 1880s, and then the Tucker home down in Brunswick County is not lived in anymore. It's in great shape, though, structurally, it's not going to fall down. They built these to last. And they still farm that property. So they're on the property every day, but they no longer live in the home.

Kathryn Gehred

You're creating sort of a book to give to these people. Are you planning on publishing this into a book event?

Alison Herring

Yes. So, this will be a nonfiction account of the Powells, and I think right now, my plan and the manuscript that I have that I'm working on right now includes the adventures that I have in piecing this together, and the interaction.

Kathryn Gehred

That's cool.

Alison Herring

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. That's the piece. So, I've spoken publicly about this a few times when I get asked, including this podcast, and it does seem like when I'm talking to the public, the piece that they're often the most interested in, is not just the history itself, but the the adventures that I have. And the work that I do when I go and I visit these sites, and I interact with the people that are there today, and how was able to piece together Ariana, this enslaved woman and her family as much as what actually got pieced together. So the process and the end result will be a nonfiction account. So, it'll just come down to is it all one book? Is there a pre-war antebellum, and then a war version and then a post war because the paper stretched the nineteenth, the whole nineteenth century into the early twentieth? It's a huge it's about 700 items, and about 3600 pages. So it's, it's big, because a big piece of this is trying I've heard you talk about this trying to identify all of these people that are mentioned in these papers. It's, I'm just not okay with somebody being mentioned, and moving on if that was a person.

Kathryn Gehred

Yes.

Alison Herring

And, so I have hit the jackpot, because the Leesburg letters are all 1848 and 49. So right around a census year, thank God, so I can just download. I've got the whole Leesburg census for 1850 and an Excel spreadsheet so that I can use it a little bit more easily to identify who these people were, and then the church records are huge. The church records that are at the Thomas Balch Library and Leesburg the baptism, the marriage, and the burial records and even just the communicant records helped me identify who the like who was Maria, whose dad was Mr. Harrison, figure out who that was and get her identified, especially the women. They don't get identified as much so...

Kathryn Gehred

it's harder to dig that information up.

Alison Herring

Yeah, I don't want to leave anybody behind.

Kathryn Gehred 

So to dive in To the context of this specific letter, what is going on?

Alison Herring

So, this letter is one I picked off from 1850. Since your podcast is more late eighteenth, early nineteenth, I thought I'd keep you out of the Civil War. So, this one's from 1850. It was written by Selena Lloyd Powell, who was born in 1807. So, she's of born of the era and that was raised by women from from your era. And it's a letter to her daughter. So, Selena is 43 years old, and she's writing to her daughter, Rebecca, who is 19 years old. And she is visiting her grandparents and Alexandria. They lived in Lloyd house and Alexandria, which I think today is the home of the offices of historic Alexandria. And that's when Rebecca is in her element. She loves going to Alexandria and she loves the society and she loves spending time with her grandparents and all of the aunts and uncles and cousins. So Selena is writing to her and giving her an update on Leesburg for the week and letting her know the other parties that have been going on what they've been doing around the house with the enslaved people have been up to so we're going to hear some of the names of the enslaved people in here. It's just it's a slice of life. And that's one of the things that really has been appealing to me about these letters is understanding how these people lived their daily lives, human history classes, we learn about these big events, and that's fine, but I was also deeply interested in just what was there what did they do on a Tuesday? How you know what, what, how did they socialize what was going on at these parties without the games that we play today? Or like without TV and Netflix then?

Kathryn Gehred

I 100% agree with you.

Alison Herring

Yeah, so that's what this letter is gonna detail. It's a little slice of life in Leesburg, Virginia in 1850. And I'll just dive in. Alright, so the letter was dated January 7, 1850. She writes

"Leesburg Monday morning, my dearest child, I know you will be disappointed if you don't get a letter tomorrow. So though it is 10 o'clock, I must try to get one written in and before 11. Saturday, I was busy all day and did not get time to write in the evening. I gave myself a strain that kept me in bed all day yesterday. Today, I am up and better but not well enough to move about much. I don't know that anything has occurred to interrupt the quiet tenor of our lives, since Harriet wrote, except a small company and Mr. Esceridge's last Tuesday, and the reading party at Miss Sally's on Friday evening. Both which Hattie seemed to think quite agreeable, though not very particularly so. Lloyd went with her to Bell's and your Father to Miss Sally's. There has been no one here of evenings, and I don't know that I have been out more than perhaps wants to take a little walk. On Friday next, the reading party meets here, and I dare say men will have something amusing to detail as they don't give much trouble to the lady of the house. No one objects to having them. They come at half past six after taking tea at home. They come in without knocking and after a little talking the gentleman take it by turns and read aloud something which has been previously selected. The ladies have some light little work which does not require much attention. And there was talking and laughing now and then about nine a waiter of refreshments is handed then a little more reading but that stops before 10, and they get home at about 10 or half past. I think they if they can keep it up which they seem disposed to do at present, it will be a very good thing. It promotes sociability at least and approves topics of conversation and perhaps an incentive to reading. Your grandma was to have come in to stay with us on Tuesday last but the weather turns so cold she was afraid to come out. I hoped she would have come in yesterday but she did not and now it is snowing again. So, I fear it will be sometime before she gets a chance if she waits for the weather to settle. She has recovered from her cold but suffers from rheumatism after any exposure. Your Aunt Ellen is just as she was and getting quite out of spirits at her long confinement. How is mother? Ask her to send me word if she is much better now than when I was down. Does she move about with less inconvenience? I received the supporter by John. Does Mother wear it without any other? I don't find that it supports me sufficiently. Cousin Lucy has another daughter and is quite well. We still have the smallpox amongst us. Mr. Reinkers house, just opposite your father's office, has been shut up some time, and it is said that all his family have it. I don't know whether this is a fact, but he came to the door and told your father he did not want anybody to come in as all his family were sick and keeps his house closely shut up. We are all quite well here, men seems as well as possible. And we have all been remarkably free from cold so far."

And here's where she talks about the enslaved. I'll be clear about who these names are.

"I have not had any servant in Robert's place. Lloyd saws all the wood, and Harriet and men clean upstairs so that Lucinda can clean the parlor and we get along very well with Pus in the dining room. If Ariana could only assist in the washing I could do very well indeed with Lucinda and Pus, but she cannot. And the washing and ironing takes most of Lucinda's time after the morning. Pus does very well indeed, considering she is a year younger than Charlie. Thank dear father, for the nice box of plums, he could not have sent me a more acceptable present. When you feel ready to come home dear Becc, you must get Edward to look out for someone coming up in the stage with whom you could come when the weather is not too cold, and we will do the same here. I feel very much obliged to Edward for his kind and polite attention to you give my love to him and to all at your Uncle Williams."

And this is a PS at the bottom that she clearly wrote a little later.

"Your uncle George went on to Baltimore with poor Cuthbert last Wednesday, and returned on Friday leaving him at the asylum quite contented. He took a great fancy to the physician at the asylum and he to him, so I do hope he will continue satisfied and be happier than when he was out. He was very unhappy here and very excitable, though not ill tempered and was easily managed. But he would meander about, and even Ma became convinced that it was necessary for him to be somewhere where he could be taken care of. Your father and all the children sent a great deal of love to you. And we all want to see you very much. Give the greatest quantity of love to your Grandpa and Grandma and all your devoted mother, S. Powell."

There's a lot of information in there about Leesburg and their daily life and the lives of their family members and close friends.

Kathryn Gehred

You mentioned that the top of the letter there's a circled kiss?

Alison Herring

There is a circled kiss! I missed that. That's right. So Nina was the little girl. She is eight years old when this letter was written, and she insists on kissing all of the letters. So most, a lot of the power letters from this time period, have her kisses on them. And she took it literally when they would say we send you our love and kisses. She wanted to do that, literally. So, she would kiss the paper and would insist that her mother had to circle it so that because she was very concerned that somebody wouldn't know what her kiss was like, how are they supposed to know. And then if there were multiple people she was kissing, she would kiss it multiple times that her mother had to circle each kiss and label it. And this is all very clear, because our mothers and the first couple of times this is happening. She's insisting, like she's having to explain to somebody why this is and then she's explaining when you write back can you please label the kiss? Because every time we get a letter from you, Nina is crawling in my lap pouring over the pages, 'Where's my kiss?' And one of the letters she explains well, I guess they think I've had enough kisses. I don't see my kisses in here. So, they so a lot of the letters have these little circles on them. label that these are Nina's kisses. It's really sweet.

Kathryn Gehred

That is so sweet. And it's another cool thing with working like when you see the actual documents, that's something that pops out that you wouldn't get. And there really is something special about getting a handwritten letter from someone and that's one of those things that you can get from them.

Alison Herring

One thing that stood out to me in this letter was the smallpox, that we're still in a pandemic now, and they did not mess around with disease in the nineteenth century, they lived with death, it was a constant for them. Smallpox, I don't hear about a lot in the letters. It's usually typhoid, a lot of measles, smallpox, they had figured out the vaccine and she does mention in another letter that they are vaccinated and that some of the people in the town are being revaccinated. Maybe we might call that a booster, but she was saying that she didn't feel like they needed to get that an incremental vaccine, and it's clear that this man did not want this to spread from his house. He's closed up his house and told people don't come here. I did look into this family they lived. They, they survived the smallpox. I got kind of concerned about him. Looks like everybody survived. But that was an interesting thing that stood out and all of these letters and in this one to that disease is something that they were constantly fearful of, and took very seriously.

Kathryn Gehred 

The section where she says I received the supporter by John, do you know what that is? Is that like a corset?

Alison Herring

I think it was something akin to a corset. I actually put this on Twitter today, because I do have a book on women's clothing, and there's nothing in it. There's enough books actually pretty thorough. And I did ask a friend of mine who dresses up and is an interpreter, and so she was not familiar with it. And I put it on Twitter to some women, historians who study the history of women's clothing. And we don't know is the quick answer. She sounds unfamiliar with it because she's having to ask her daughter does mother wear it without any other like, she's not sure how, how do you wear this. So it's clearly something that's new, it could have been a fad in Alexandria that just never took off. So, I think it's probably corset related because they use the word corset when they are talking about a corset. So this was different that she calls it a supporter.

Kathryn Gehred 

That was relatable.

Alison Herring

Yeah. Also like the parties and even just the, you know, the fact that they're coming over like what time you know, a half past six, and they're not even bothering to knock, they're just coming on in and that the party goes until 10. And what's happening at the party. Now she doesn't go into the level of detail that her daughter does her daughter Hattie has written about a couple of these reading parties about the snickering that goes on, the flirting. So I guess there's some poor guy who's actually reading something to the audience and the audience is only mildly interested in that, according to Hattie, they're more interested in the flirting and making eyes at one another and the joking around, and they're trying really hard not to laugh out loud because they don't want the poor guy to think that they're laughing at him there just laughing it then he starts in one instance, he starts reading louder as if like, I really hope they're not laughing at me, and I'm gonna project confidence. But so they'll read Shakespeare, Lord Byron, some of them state go over what it is that

Kathryn Gehred 

They're actually reading. So this is just a social party. This isn't supposed to be like an educational party or anything. mean, she's saying that it might encourage people to read, but...

Alison Herring

No. I this one didn't get as out of hand as others. The young people would have these kissing parties. They call them bussery bees, which I learned Buss is an eighteenth century word for kissing, can like a spelling bee or a quilting bee, they called it a bussery bee, and it was just an excuse for the young people to get together and figure out ways to, like socially acceptable ways to kiss each other. With these games that they would play. Makes Spin the Bottle look sad. I think these Victorians were not as prudish as I have been led to believe. I don't think that's true. And their parties would go like these dances would go until six o'clock in the morning, and that is a constant 3am, 6am They just come home exhausted fall into the bed,

Kathryn Gehred 

Were the Powells, were they part of like the upper crust of society?

Alison Herring

They were. That's a really good question. They were a part of the upper crust, they just didn't have the level of money that the upper crust had, you know, all four grandparents were alive. So there was no estate money coming downstream, and even when it did, their grandparents were wealthy, but each family had 12-15 kids. So you can take a lot of money once you divide a lot of money by 12 or 15 ways like that money gets small, a lot smaller, pretty quickly. And Charles Lock, he was a lawyer, he was educated at Yale studied the law in Winchester, Virginia, and his law career just never took off. He was not a terribly ambitious man. He was a scholar, he loved to be at home and read, and he loved to think and have conversations with people. So, he really found his calling, and I think the women did too. When they opened that school, they were good at it. And loved it too. And that's what they did after the war. That's how they support themselves to through the end of their lives. Rebecca Powell founded a school in Alexandria that stood for over 50 years. And when they were living in Illinois, they taught Sunday school. And that was the first references I found in their papers about them teaching, and I just wonder if there wasn't something about that that clicked. Now a later letter in the early 20th century from Rebecca and implies she said somebody convinced her father to open the school in Winchester. She had stayed in touch with Yale University, and so they were asking her questions about her father. And so she and they kept her answers. So those are all at Yale and, and one of them she said that he was somebody convinced him to open a school for girls. And so what we don't know is who that was, and why that was, and why why Winchester, oh, my gosh, there's only evil though, especially since they had such rich connections in Loudoun County and in Alexandria, unless it was just that there was so much competition there that maybe, you know, in Winchester had less competition, perhaps there were existing women's schools there, but we don't have all the answers. Unfortunately, their papers go silent when they gather. So, when all the family are together, there's eight letters from that. And so I don't, there's some gaps. And I liked that this one included the names of the enslaved.

Kathryn Gehred

Right.

Alison Herring

Robert is the first person she mentioned, I have not had a servant and Roberts place. Robert was actually a free man of color. And so he has left Leesburg at this time, we've been able to piece together that free family and who they were, we can't trace them after Leesburg. They have left by 1851, they're gone, and we know that he's left by 1850. And, then she mentioned Lucinda is somebody that we know from other letters that they are leasing. She is enslaved by somebody else. So she's already not only in a bad situation, but she's been separated from whatever support system she had with the other enslaved people where she was from. Pus is a heartbreaking one. She is a little girl. We know she's little because Mrs. Powell said in the letter that Pus does very well considering she's a year younger than Charlie. So, we know how old Charlie is. He's 10 years old. So we know that Pus is nine. So we know a nine year old little girl is already being put to work and she's working in the dining room. Ariana is the one that I've been able to identify, meaning I can connect her to records. There's enough other data points for her like the names of her children. That helped me confirm that yes, this is the same Ariana and these records that is mentioned in these letters also with helps her names a little unusual. It's not a common name in Loudoun County. But what's interesting, she says, "If only Ariana could assist in the washing I could do very well," so it's not clear why Ariana is not and I happen to know that she is pregnant. She's in her first trimester so she's not very far along, but she is going to have a baby girl in July of this year Ellen is going to be born but it's not clear and Mrs. Powell doesn't seem inclined to force her for whatever that's worth. She's just like, 'Oh, shucks, Ariana can't help with the washing.' But it did provide some information, you know, for descendants about, you know what, what kind of work was already on it doing in the household? What was she expected to be doing? And who were these other people that formed her support system?

Kathryn Gehred 

How did you identify Ariana and you mentioned that you were able to find some of her descendants who are still alive today. How did that process go?

Alison Herring

So I use Ancestry to try to identify people and one night, late, I had come across her name again and another letter, and decided to give it another shot and just looked for the name Ariana on the 1870 census and I looked before, but her name didn't get recorded. Quite, it was her name was written phonetically on the record. And so this time, I had a hit for 1870. But there what she was living with it with a man named Charles Bingham. So, there wasn't enough information to know if this is her or not, and I noticed the same woman was on the 1880 census, this time living with granddaughters whose names matched her daughter's. So that was intriguing. So, she had a daughter named Nancy and a daughter named Ariana, and she had two granddaughters named Nancy and Anna. I went back to take another look at the 1870 census, and notice that, you know, on Ancestry, you can submit corrections to census records that got mis transcribed, somebody had done that. And, I feel like for you to submit a correction, it's not hard, but it is kind of next level, most casual genealogists don't do that, and so that struck me that somebody cared enough to submit a correction to her name, and that it's linked to somebody's account on Ancestry. So I just sent the person a message and asked, gosh, I'm researching this lady named Ariana. Here's the names of a couple of her children, because at the moment, this was something I did on a whim. And I couldn't remember the names of all of her children off the top of my head, so I named a couple and just asked, 'Do you think we might be researching the same Arianna' and he responded within, I don't know, an hour, and he listed out all the names of the other children, and within that hour, because I was working at the time, I had come across the names of her other children. And it was just one that it was a moment where the hair on my neck stood up.

Kathryn Gehred

Wow.

Alison Herring

Oh, my gosh! But I still, you know, but maybe this is where I pumped the brakes, because I thought, you know, I want this to be true. How else can I be sure, because the names match the genders match the ages match, so almost as if he knew that I was sitting there thinking, 'Gosh, can this really be true,' he sent a second message with a death record of another one of her children that didn't fit. And he said, I don't know how this fits into the story, because this child was born in Kentucky, which means Ariana was born in Kentucky. And I agreed, I thought, Gosh, I don't I don't know how this fits when we think about this. And it took until the next day before I remembered, oh my gosh, the Powell's lived in Kentucky for two years. Remember, they went from Loudoun into Kentucky. And then they came right back. And this just clinched it that they had dragged her with them. Yeah, she had conceived a child had a baby. And then they brought them back to Loudoun. And this was that child, he lived until 1920. And so this was the death record of that child. And so this was what I needed to be sure, and so then I shared with him the letters that mentioned Ariana so that he could piece that together, and we stayed in touch, you know, I share more information as it comes to light, and he shares more information with me as it comes to light. And I'm thankful because I don't think I could have identified her if it hadn't been for the work of her descendants. So I think she advocated for herself in her lifetime, because she gets recorded and a fair number of records, which is astonishing. And then he has clearly been advocating for his own genealogy and his family history, and if not, for the work of Ariana and his descendant, I could not have pieced that together. 

Kathryn Gehred 

It's really difficult when if with enslaved ancestors, that a lot of times you get like a name and a financial record. And that's about all you can find to actually have people mentioned in these family letters is really cool. This really cool story.

Alison Herring

This is the kind of information we can get from these letters. And this was a reason why I picked this one that and the tale of Uncle Cuthbert. Yeah, so he was Charles Powell's brother, the father's brother, and it's not clear what he had. But he did have some kind of a challenge. He's in and out of asylum. So he was in western state for a time, and then according to the family, he escaped and made it back to his home, and his parents were alarmed, but delighted. And I wouldn't had those records pulled at the Library of Virginia and according to Western State, he did not escape. They just released him. So I'm not sure what story's true. The family was surprised anyways, which implies they thought he was going to be there longer that they were not going to release him, but he could function on his own and sometimes did and he did attend Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. So, he was educated as a minister and sometimes worked as a minister. So sometimes he'd be out on his own, other times he needed supervision, that's what Mrs. Powell is explaining in this letter that he was unhappy there. not ill tempered. And he was easily managed, she said, but he would meander about and even his own mother became concerned that he needed to be somewhere. So they tried Baltimore, he seemed to like it. He liked the physician, the physician like him, he didn't stay in the asylum, and he didn't live out his life in an asylum, he was kind of in and out, but we don't have enough information to know. And the records from Western State did not shed any light on what it is that was keeping him from living the life that his siblings had. 

Kathryn Gehred 

The history of Western states really interesting. And you know, you can go stay there now. It's one of the houses that still survives, I guess. 

Alison Herring

Yeah, I saw that it's been converted into an Inn. Yeah, that's true. It'll be interesting to see if records survive. I don't know what they don't say what asylum he's in, in Baltimore, but there couldn't have been many in 1850. So, it'd be interesting to find out which asylum that was and if those records survive and what light that might shed. I mean, he marries pretty late in life, and was a chaplain in Alexandria, so that's such a huge, I what I love about this letter is that it's all of this is in there we have the parties which are very jolly, we have the and the enslaved and the the window that we can open onto that world. And, then we have just the family goings on, health. We have a contagion that is in Leesburg we have the smallpox is there. So, it's a bit of an action packed letter, but all of them are like this. Two of the daughters were sent to Gloucester County at this time, they were supposed to visit some relatives for a really short visit, like two weeks, they got stuck for between seven months to a year, it's not real clear when they got back. It emphasizes, you know, in these Jane Austen books, they always talk about the weather and the road, and it really brings home how critical that was. That is why they got stuck out there for seven, at least seven months, it may have been as long as a year, you imagine some relative comes to visit you a year later, they're still there. And, the problem was all the stars had to align, and they make it clear in these letters, even in this one when she says if when you're ready to come home, find somebody who's going to come up in the stage because she can't even though she's 19 years old, and she's fully capable. She's not allowed to travel by herself. And so when she and her sister are out in Gloucester, they have to wait for one of the male relatives to be so inclined to go from Alexandria to Gloucester, which is not a quick trip or for her uncle to have a reason to go into Washington, DC or Alexandria. And so that has to happen, and the weather has to be good, and the roads have to be good. So, all of that has to align and it just didn't and they there were so many false starts. There were so many times where they had planned that they were the her father was gonna go and get her, but he was a lawyer. So maybe some case came up and he's now got to go to Fauquier County to the courthouse and so he can't go and get her and so this kept happening to the point that she had a temper tantrum on the back of one of the letters. She just flipped it over and just lost her mind. Like 'Well, I guess I live here now. Nobody is gonna come and get me I like I'm just stuck here. This is awful. I hate this.' All right. And you know, Gloucester is delightful, but she really didn't get along very well with her Aunt Rebecca. I think they both had very strong personalities. Also, Mrs. Powell is urging her to please be patient because her Aunt Rebecca has lost the baby at that time, too. And so there was a she was implying that maybe her Aunt Rebecca obviously is going through a lot of trauma, and maybe taking that out on her niece, which isn't. It's understandable, but also not fair, and so that I think there's drama that's making this not pleasant for Rebecca. Plus, Rebecca doesn't like being away from society. I really think this affected her the rest of her life, for the rest of her life she never goes anywhere without a locked down exit strategy. Even like in Winchester, in the war, when they were sending the girls out of town, Rebecca refused to go, and I mean, they're not going to pick her up and lift her into the wagon. So she would win the battle with their parents every single time. And every time I read, that she's fighting with their parents about leaving, I'm like, this goes back. All she has to do is look at her mother and be like, 'remember Gloucester?' And, her mother probably just has to be like, yeah, fair enough. You did get stuck out there.

Kathryn Gehred

That's fascinating.

Alison Herring

It's good to get to know them from when they're so young, and watch them grow over their life and to see and wonder how some of these events that happened to them earlier in their life affected them later, even when they're toddlers, the parents just like parents do today, when they put on social media, some crazy thing their kids said, the parents did that too. Then they'll write down all these little things. And Rebecca's personality comes out when she's a toddler. And Hattie's pop personality comes out and Lloyds is the same, because I'd gotten to know them as adults and then to see those little idiosyncrasies of their character coming out when they were very little ages two, three and four. It is pretty adorable.

Kathryn Gehred 

This is just a fantastic project.

Alison Herring

Thank you. That's very sweet. Yeah, it's been it's been a blessing that came out of something that was very traumatic. So, I've been lucky that I happened upon it. I've been lucky that these papers were donated to William and Mary, in the middle of the 20th century, and that William and Mary has taken such good care of them and they have just been really kind and delightful to me as an outsider who showed up one day, and this is how we do it in the business world. I just thought you had been transcribing these letters. I wonder if I should go down there and meet them. So I just sent the head of Special Collections an email. I wore a suit, just because I don't know how this was done, so I just showed up. I was like, 'Hi, I'm Alison.' So we just sat down at a conference room table and talked about why I volunteered for this. I think they really didn't know what to do with me. Like why this person just showed up at this library. But they've just been really kind and supportive, which I appreciate considering how little I knew, at the time, I know a lot more now I've been to the Southern, I follow the academic historians on Twitter, so that I can learn I don't want this project, I want it to reflect the latest scholarship that is available and that to reflect the awesome work that the PhDs and the Masters students are doing. I think the Powell's deserve that, and Ariana certainly deserves that, and so I wouldn't want it to exist in a vacuum.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was an absolute delight.

Alison Herring

Oh, it was a lot of fun for me, I don't get to geek out about this others who do this very often. So...

Kathryn Gehred 

As for my listeners, I will link to Alison's project in the show notes and any other resources anyplace else you want to point them I'm happy to put anything on the website, and I am as ever your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much.