Episode 38 — A Rumor That You Abandoned Me

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 38 - “A Rumor That You Abandoned Me”
Published on March 14, 2023

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 Women's History podcast where we feature 18th and early 19th century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. This week I am very excited to be speaking with Lisa Magnin and Dr. Lucas Haasis, of the Prize Papers Project. I'm so excited to have you. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Can you tell me a little bit about what the Prize Papers Project is?

Lucas Haasis

Yeah, so first of all, I would like to thank you for inviting us to this podcast. We are very excited, and we are delighted to be here. We must say and in the Prize Papers Project we are sorting, we are preserving, we are cataloging and digitizing the Prize Papers Collection of the UK National Archives. The Prize Papers are a result of an Early Modern Warfare practice, which witnessed its heyday in the context of 17th and 18th century European colonial expansion, and during wartime hostile European powers would capture their enemy ships all over the world and capturing, or as it was called, prize taking, or privateering, depending on whether the ships were of the Royal Navy or private war ships equipped with a letter of marque was not a lawless act of piracy but illegitimate warfare practice the legality of which was examined before a court the high quarterback morality in London. So, whenever a raid was attempted on the ship, the crucial requirement for ensuring the legality of this action was that the captain was able to prove that the captured ship belonged to an enemy during the prevailing war. And for this purpose, often the entire ship load including documents or documents on board, the ships, papers, private and commercial documents, automated and transit and personal effects of the crew, for instance, were confiscated and transferred to the Capitol. And the court process was began at the Admiralty court where the confiscated papers were used as evidence and then transferred to and stored in the courts archive and then later moved into the National Archives. And, this practice of the prize taking them in the end resulted in a vast archive an extraordinary archive of the early modern world, the Prize Papers Collection that contains documents for more than 35,000 captured chips captured between 1652 and 1817. Held in, at the moment, in 4088 boxes the Prize Papers Collection includes at least 160,000, undelivered letters, but also accompanied by books and papers on all manner of legal, commercial, maritime colonial administrative matters. And geographically, this might also be interesting, the collection includes Europe and the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia even, and the aim of our German UK Prize Papers Project is the complete digitization, sorting and cataloguing of this collection. And we will present all documents with rich metadata in an open access research database, the Prize Papers portal and this year, we started to upload the first digitized documents actually, what I also have to say is that the Prize Papers Project is part of the Gottingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. It is based here at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and the National Archives UK and the project has been awarded 9.7 millions Euros in funding as part of the academies program of the union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities for a prospective funding period of 20 years.

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow. Just out of curiosity, for this funding, and the digitizing of the letters, are you transcribing and annotating, or are you just visually digitizing the images?

Lucas Haasis

Our main, our main goal is to digitize all the documents, and it's a lot of documents, I think in the end it will be 3.5 million images. So this is our main goal of all the wars and all the documents at the TNA. This is our main goal, and then we provide metadata and this is what we do. And, we want to promote research on the documents. That is our main task.

Kathryn Gehred 

So what kinds of letters are these? This seems like an unusual collection? Normally I'm working with collections from somebody's archive or correspondence of one person. So what type of documents are these? My podcast is mostly about women's letters. Are there many letters to her from women in these papers? Or is it mostly men's letters?

Lisa Magnin

What first I will answer to the what type of letters are these. And so, as you said, it is not a personal archive of one person. So we have a huge diversity of people writing and suppose to receive the letters. They come from very diverse social strata. They also come from many regions in the world. So, we don't have only letters from diplomats or merchants, but also from more humble people like soldiers or sailors, and also from women. And we have a lot of family related letters. So just people trying to keep contact with someone established abroad or someone who is traveling such as a sailor so we have a lot of letters from spouses or siblings or even children or parents. Just saying, 'hey, every everybody at home is doing fine.' We hope you're all fine. And we also have business related letters between business partners. We have even love letters, letters of condolence, we really have a lot of different types of letters from very different people, very different social backgrounds. We also have variety of languages, of course, because these letters come from many different places. And I think in the whole project documents, we have listed 19 language so far. It's, it's all very diverse. Let's say that. And to answer the second part of your question about the women, it is difficult to estimate because we have only started entering the metadata for this while of Austrian Succession. But for now, we estimate the proportion of letters written by women to at least 30 to 40 percent.

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow!

Lisa Magnin

Quite big.

Kathryn Gehred

Quite a bit larger than I would have expected. So each of you, what work do you do for the project?

Lucas Haasis

I am the research coordinator of the project and also responsible for the PR, because the of course, the Prize Papers Project attached a lot of importance to research, networking, and collaboration. We are a team here at the National Archives. But of course, we are dependent on research going on around the world. So, we pursue various research projects, and we cooperate with numerous international researchers and research institutions working on the Prize Papers, and different countries in the world, and in project related areas. So, please get in touch if you would like to cooperate, we are always happy about collaboration.

Kathryn Gehred 

And Lisa,

Lisa Magnin

I am a research associate. And as you can hear, I am a native French speaker. So, I am working mainly on the French documents because Great Britain captured a lot of French ships during the different walls in the early modern period, and therefore we have a lot of documents and also letters written in French. And so more concretely, my work is, as Lucas said earlier, it's about metadata. So we enter metadata about the ships that were captured, we try to find every information about the journeys, the places, the date of departure of capture of arrival, the ladings, who was the owner of the ship, everything we can find, then we enter metadata about the documents. So what type of document is this? In which language? Is it? Sometimes it is the first question, what is it about who created it? Where when, and then metadata about the actors, or these people creating are supposed to receive the documents. So for letters, for instance, we try to identify the writer and the addressee. And yeah, as you can imagine, it's not only entering this in a database, because for every almost every information, we need to research things. So it's a lot of research also including, which is really exciting.

Kathryn Gehred 

As you've been starting this research process, what has been your most exciting find,

Lucas Haasis

I have to refer to my book on which I was working for quite some time, which is based on a unique discovery of a previously forgotten complete business and letter archive of the Hamburg merchant whom I know very well, now, Nicola Gottlieb Luetkens in the National Archives. And this business archive was one stored in a wooden treasure chest hidden in the hole of a of a Hamburg ship that was captured by the English in 1742, and 45. And this entire chest hidden, really hidden under some heavy barrels of sugar was found during the inspection of the ship and then was removed and then, of course, confiscated by the English, and then ended up as evidence in the court case, and which led to it being kept in the court registry in 1748, where it was forgotten for centuries, until I rediscovered it in 2012. And this personal archive still contains all the records this merchant kept while traveling in France between 1743 and 1745, during this establishment phase, and the archive is really a kind of time capsule, because when open opening it, you can gain really unique insights and deep insights into his life, into his business, into business and love and everything else. But, you can imagine business and letters of the 18th century of a wholesale merchant and I based my book, a microhistory book on it, which is called the Power of Persuasion: Becoming a Merchant in the 18th Century. Some advertising.

Kathryn Gehred

Yeah, but of course.

Lucas Haasis

My most exciting find, because I've worked at it for some time now.

Kathryn Gehred 

And Lisa, you have any exciting finds like that,

Lisa Magnin

I would say that's every letter, very interesting, of course, very exciting because each letter kind of contains a fragment of the existence of women or men are children who have not necessarily left any other traces. And, this is also moving because, as you know, the mail was not delivered. So we are actually able to read a letter that the addressee were not able to read. So it's really moving, but we don't have only letters. We have more than 80 different document types. We also have Bill of ladings, bill of health, logbooks, Letter of Marque, ransom bills many many people, many, many things, really, really different document types that are also interesting. And personally, my favorite document type, which I find the most exciting is the Mercer rolls, which was the least of the crew of a ship, and they were established in the port of departure. And then they were updated in the port of arrival, and it gives us a lot of information about the crew members about the age, their region, their function, also if they have deserted, or maybe if they died during the journey. And, it also gives information about the passengers on board, so this is really interesting. And I will say that we are really lucky that not only the letters are interesting, because we have a lot of documents that are not letters.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah, well, talking about the different types of documents. What type of scholarship do you hope that this project will assist?

Lucas Haasis

Well with the point is our main task is the complete digitization, as I already said, and the presentation of this entire collection, in the data portal and both teams in London. And in London, we aim to become a point of contact. That's what we want to point to be for many projects, individuals, but also institutions from all over the world now already and in the future, also promoting supporting research on a lot of different topics, of course on global developments, migration, conflict, communication, linguistics on different national languages. As Lisa said, 90 languages already found in the collection and regional particularities as well as on Transnational and cross cultural or cross country phenomena, of course, also. And, this is, as we think is also our responsibility with regard to such a very diverse, very multilingual, global collection of Prize Papers Collection. And there are, as you said, there are many, many fold research opportunities and ways you can use the collection. And, it is already in use that you can use it, for instance, for maritime history, military history, natural history, history of the slave trade and plantation based economies, of course, history of the family, history of communication, of migration, legal history, economic history, and many, many more. So, so many documents, so many time capsules, so a lot of research is possible.

Kathryn Gehred 

There's been a lot of discussion about, you know, who keeps the archive who decides what is saved. And this is such a fascinating collection of just everything that was on that ship at that one time, like you say, a time capsule, it doesn't matter what class or background. I mean, I mentioned literacy is involved. But even in the case of ships, musters, you've even got information from people who probably weren't literate. So it's just a fabulous resource. I'm so excited for this project. And now to sort of zoom in a little bit, let's talk about one of these letters. Lisa, could you tell me a little bit about the letter that you picked to talk about for this episode?

Lisa Magnin

It is a letter that was written in in Bayonne, which is in the south of France. The first July 1745, by a woman named Jannote Roustant, and the letter was addressed to Jean Roustant in Martinique.

Kathryn Gehred 

What do we know about Jannote and Jean Roustant?

Lisa Magnin

We unfortunately don't know much about them. We know that Jean Roustant was Jannote's husband, that he was a cook in Martinique since at least 1744. And that Jannote was living in Bayonne with the children, but we don't know anything more. Because as I said earlier, these are letters from people who have not necessarily left other traces and everything we know come from this letter. So I really hope that maybe in later in another ship, we will find other letters from them, or maybe another document that just mentioned them in just to have more information about them. Because this is all I can say.

Kathryn Gehred 

Do you know anything about how the letter came to be captured?

Lisa Magnin

Yeah, of course, the letter was on the ship,, French ship called the Diligente. This was a French ship that went from Bayonne and was supposed to go to Havana and Martinique in July 1745 that was captured by an British privateer about 10 days after its departure, and was brought to Lisbon. And onboard the ship there were of course merchandise this but also mail, there were about 70 letters that come from France and also from Spain, but all from the same area because by Bayonne is really close to the Spanish border. And you have a lot of Spanish letters that come from the area of Sebastian, so it is really 70 letters from the same area. And they were all captured at the same time as the ship. We have a transcription I can try to read it. It won't be as good as the French version, of course, but I can read it.

Kathryn Gehred 

Okay, fabulous. Thank you.

Lisa Magnin

"In Bayonne first July 1745, my dearest husband, since a favorable opportunity has presented itself in the form of haciendo seamstress son, who is set to leave for Martinique on a ship of elderlies which was taken as a prize by a privateer from here in Bayonne and whom God may protect from all harm and safely guide to his destination. I cannot refrain from writing you this letter to not only inform you about the poor condition which me and my poor children find ourselves in, after having been neglected by you for so long, but also to tell you also that the rumor has spread here that you have abandoned me and that I had to give you an opportunity to do so, with the result that many people look at me with contempt and that I am reduced to not having credit for a one-pound loaf of bread from any baker for my poor children at any bakery. What pains me even more is to see myself reduced in such an extreme manner during the prime of my life. And I assure you that I do not know how I would have responded to this situation, if it had not been for my children. Due to all of this, I felt obliged to write a letter, saying that I had received it from you, in order to silence scandal mangers, and even to try and see if the baker will grant me credit for some bread after showing him to the letter, which he did as the cross in front of the dead man. I am enclosing a copy of the letter which I had made for a purpose, so that you can see for yourself if I have done this efficiently. On this note, I leave it up to you to imagine what condition I may be in since I have not made any impact so far, which is why I beg you in the name of God to do better than you have done up until now. If not for me, then for the children. If you neither want to do it for the former, not for the latter, then at least do it for the love of God. And if you do want to send me something, then I will ask you to do with the help of Monsieur Desai, who is to come as part of the country. In the meantime, I am all yours, my dearest friend, your most humble servant, Jannote."

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow, that's a fascinating letter that certainly tells a little story. What about it piqued your interest?

Lisa Magnin

So in her letter, Janet mentioned a fourth letter she had made to pretend she received news from her husband. And she says that she's enclosing a copy of this fourth letter. So it means that this fourth or forged letter was also on board the Diligente when it was captured. And we also have it. And what happened is that I read this forged letter before reading it, and that's one. And I don't know why they were not together, they were not following each other. So when I read it, I had no clue about Jannote. And it was really weird, because I had read, at this point, maybe 10 or 12 letters, and they were all coming from this Bayonne area. And written in June or July 45. And I had this letter from Jean Roustant, written in December 44, in Martinique, on a ship going to Martinique. So I was I found it a bit strange. And then when I found when I read Jannote's letter, it was like one of these moment when everything starts to make sense, suddenly,

Kathryn Gehred 

I just have to say that I really respect her strategy for writing a fake letter so she can get that credit. That's fantastic. So she's hasn't heard from her husband. In a while. There's a rumor that he's abandoned her. And so therefore, she has no money and she can't even buy bread, right? Is that the situation?

Lisa Magnin

Exactly. For some reason people think she's guilty of the abandonment of a husband. And therefore, the baker, for instance, doesn't want to give her any bread, this rumor, who accuses the husband for abandoning her, really discredits her, not him. And because she will have necessarily given him a reason to do so. When it is she who is left with no resources and with children. So it is quite edifying, I think,

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah, again, if she had been blamelessly abandoned, then maybe the baker would have given her some bread, but no, it's her fault somehow. So she she forges a letter to disprove this, and uses it to try to get by and I'm interested into why. Just absolutely. I know you don't know for sure. But why she sent it to him like did I do a good enough job or please write something along these lines back so that I can actually and then of course, the fact that the letter was captured, so he never got it?

Lisa Magnin

Exactly. And I as you said, I can't say for sure why she she wanted him to know all of this. But when I read the letter, it is my own interpretation, of course. But I think I read the words of a very determined and maybe a bit angry woman but not a desperate one. And I don't think she's, of course she's begging him to take his responsibilities and she says, Oh, look in which poor condition I am. But I don't think it is for really seeking his pity but more to remind him of his responsibilities and to to show him that she's also working by herself and finding solutions. I think it's more to make him feel guilty and remind him of years of responsibilities, which I quite like to, and I also really like, strategy of doing this fourth letter because it's like he has abandoned her says the rumor, and he's far away, but he still have this authority that nobody will give her money or bread. So, I think it's kind of she can't do without him, and she, the only way she she she finds to do without him, is to kind of embody him through this fourth letter, because in the letter, it's really clever. In the forged letter, it is explained why she hasn't received any goods from Martinique. And also, it is said who she can ask for money in the meantime. So I don't know if it worked. We know that for the baker, it did not work, apparently, that maybe for this person who was to help her raise money, maybe it worked.

Kathryn Gehred 

Oh, my gosh, wow. That's fascinating. That's so fascinating.

Lisa Magnin

You did very well to to say that he has not received this letter. Oh, yes, actually, it was it was intercepted in a way. So, we cannot say we have only this letter. So, we cannot really be sure if he had abandoned her. Or if maybe all his letters were also lost, and we don't know if he has received this one. Maybe Jannote has sent several copies of this. Or maybe she has written another letter to him after we don't know if he was aware of the situation. Because as you said, many, many ships were captured. And we have evidence in other letters of people referring to this very complicated communication between Europe and America. So, this is something we don't know, for sure, and that's also why I really, really hope that we may find other information about them later, because I'm very curious to know what what happened next. I hope her strategy works.

Kathryn Gehred 

And, what a frustrating position to be in where your husband is gone. And you don't know if he's abandoned you or something like this has happened. So you might as well just keep pretending that everything's fine until proven otherwise.

Lisa Magnin

Exactly.

Kathryn Gehred 

What a terrible situation to be in. So Lucas, tell me tell me about the letter that you chose.

Lucas Haasis

I present to you a letter written by Federica Teller and May 1798. To her also to her missing husband

Kathryn Gehred

These missing husbands. Do you know anything about this couples, you know what was going on in their lives at the time that this letter was written?

Lucas Haasis

Yeah, Frederica or Johanna Frederica Telle was a bards daughter from Ronnenberg in Germany born in 1765. So she was 33 years old, and her husband was Ambrosius, Ambrosius Telle, very German name. Ambrosius Telle who was her husband and he was a merchant. But as the letter shows us, he actually left her to emigrate to America, leaving behind his wife and family with also with three children. And I found the letter during one of my first research trip to the National Archives. And this letter really, I must say, moved me even to tears because in this letter, if we take a better husband on with us in the most emotional way, I would say to send her a sign of life, also to help her and her children and free her from misery and Ronnenberg, where she lived in poverty and without a husband since the time Ambrosius had left on a boat to emigrate to America, which was already five and a half years ago this really moved me in Frederika can ask her husband in this letter to help her to come to America to of course,

Kathryn Gehred 

I read the blog post that you wrote about this letter and you mentioned that it was in a Thuringian accent, the the writing, can can you explain what that is? And what that what that means to you?

Lucas Haasis

Yes, I said it's from Thuringia. And there's a dialect of course and during the and the letter contains some sentences that were written as, as a phonetic spelling, mirroring this dialect in Thuringia meaning that she wrote as she spoke, in a way though, that sentences were written as she may be dictated the letters, but I assume that she wrote it herself due to the handwriting, and if you read the letter aloud, you can literally hear her speak which makes the letter even more moving, and Frederika is very restless or restlessness becomes evident due to her many indentation temptations, her sights in the letters, there aren't that many pauses like pausing and sentence and so on. So, her desperation really is palpable and very sonorous prayerful repetitive sentences also she she writes, "oh God", multiple times in this letter multiple times an example taken from the original would sound like this for this dialect first in German, maybe "Schreib doch, ob du immer noch der Gute, der liebende Gatte, ob du noch ein guter liebender Vater von drei erbarmungsvollen Kindern bist." [English translation]"So write whether you are still the good loving husband, whether you're still a good loving father of your of your three children." And this phonetic spelling is typical for letters as we know written by people from lowest strata causing us to also find it in letters, as Lisa said, by sailors, for instance, also soldiers or even peasants.

Kathryn Gehred 

So do you know how this letter came to be captured?

Lucas Haasis

It was also found on a on a ship. No surprise here. I found the letter by Federica from Ronneburg among the confiscated papers of the American ship Juno, and this ship has been captured by the English privateers and advanced during its voyage from Amsterdam to Philadelphia in 1799. That is during the War of the second coalition. And during that time, such a targeted capture then of American ships even represented an important war strategy for the British crown. And of course, one must say it was legal way of tactical warfare for both parties. So not only the British captured the American ships, but also vice versa.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, you'd be able to read the letter for us. I think that would be interesting.

Lucas Haasis

Yes, I mean, there's no dialect in there now. I think we can read the content. And it's a it's a long letter, but it's it's worth while to read it in the entire letter.

"Ronneburg 28th of May 1798. Most faithful husband, oh, what are you earning moment to write to you good husband, once again, in five and a half years, my despair is of the highest degree. You left your fatherland, a very unhappy wife and mother, and three poor, innocent children, parents and siblings without even writing to them in a single time. To not say goodbye to them is sad for your wife, who loves you, for your children who love you, who every day and hour have you in their thoughts, who love their good and gentle father and if quietly should many, many a tear over you with the unhappy mother. For hours I've been on my knees and hugged these poor, innocent, deserted children, praying to Providence that may soon be the last hour of our suffering, or God our time has not yet come. The happy moment is not yet here, which will save us from our hardship, our misery and from the despair of God. Husband on my knees, I beg you, I asked you by all that the sacred save me, save your poor, innocent children. hear the cries of the poorest of the children, save them from the press of suffering. They cry for bread, and I must deny it to them. This is painful for a loving mother. Even if you can send us money do write so that we can only see if you're still the good loving husband, if you're still a good loving father of your three compassionate children. Oh god, how many times have I complained about such fortunate, unfortunates and now I'm also one of them. Not just one one, please send for me and your children. This is my most ardent wish, I will gladly work as much as my strengths permits, and even should it be worked for an abominable society with you. I would live in the most distant part of the world. Quench the desire of an unhappy mother; here the begging of your deserted children beside for the Father, do not leave them from you fulfill the duties that good fathers oh to their children, be one of the good fathers, the Honorable thinking husband do not break the bond of faith you swore to me before the altar. Then the highest blessings will be with you, then your children will not be allowed to cry out for vengeance against the father who otherwise loved them so gently. In the month of November, your brother sent me your suitcase sealed, laid up without bills of lading on the pretense that he wouldn't be moving to Warsaw, and that he would not wish to carried 1000 miles with him. So he wanted me to leave it in my keeping you wrote him that you would like it, send it to America. In it there are a dozen of good shirts and six trousers, some stockings, a pair of shoes and a few worned stockings. Now I asked to you to send a list of its contents to me send this to me quite timely so that I can have Avagann summoned to court. He's a rich man from an area or would you wrote your brother have opened it himself? We take our leave of you with 1000 good kisses your wife who loves you, wife and children, Frederica Teller."

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow.

Lucas Haasis

Very moving. 

Kathryn Gehred 

Very moving. Yeah, it's very even even translated. It's very well written and moving, I guess. So this is sort of another strategy of a similar situation in the previous and Lisa's letter. There's a woman who's kind of trying to finagle her way into getting by and it seems as though Federica is past that point. And she's really desperately begging for help. The section about the suitcase. Can you explain a little bit about what what what's going on there?

Lucas Haasis

Oh, there must be a suitcase. And it's also a puzzle for us. So the suitcase came back. And the brother was going to Warsaw us so he was emigrating to go to another area in the world. And so it was with this problem. He sent it back to her and she cannot do anything about it. And she hadn't have a note from him or anything. So, it's like the same situation then with Lisa's letter that she had to prove that he's at least dead and to get some money some support or something, but she wasn't able to so it's actually quite comparable to Lisa situation.

Kathryn Gehred 

And I mean, I know he never got this letter but I can't imagine reading this letter and not it would be very heartless to read this letter and not do anything to help, but of course he never got it. We know that you didn't get it.

Lucas Haasis

And, she's a poor woman. So, she won't be able to write a lot of letters. So merchants, for instance, as Lisa said, wrote a lot of letters and send it on three ships. But in this case, she wrote, maybe this one letter, and it never reached him. So it's really, really moving. We did some research and so on. So this is this is a letter about a bard's daughter, and therefore from a woman from the lower classes, which makes us very, very significant. So only a few letters from daughters stemming from this poorer classes from this period in time have been preserved in archives. And the letter is also interesting because it is a testimony to one of the first waves of emigration to America, as it was typical at the time for people from structurally rather weak areas of the German territories to emigrate. And now the final story is significant on a slightly different level. It's the fact that before the outbreak of the corona pandemic, we actually gained information that a descendant of Ambrosius, is still living within the USA today.

Kathryn Gehred 

OH?!

Lucas Haasis

So yes, it was really before the pandemic broke out. But we long assume that Ambrosius must have died during the voyage to America. But as it should turn out later, this was actually not the case, as we will learn in 2019, because I'm Ambrosius had in fact build up a new life in America, maybe it was because of the tragic fact that the letter and never reached him to the to the capture of the Juno. And we learned about Ambrosius actual life in America, because one of his actual descendants contacted us in July 2019. In reaction to a blog article, I've written about this letter together with my colleague, Anika Raapke. And, I still remember this special day very, very well, because it was the second time that this letter moved me and cause emotions on my side. Because it's always funny story, and it's always a special moment when actually sending of one of your research subjects contacts you. So, I'm really grateful to Thomas Miller from Utah for contacting me in July 2019. And Tom, as he told me became aware of the letter by Federica doing his research on his family's past and on Ambrosius story in particular, because Ambrosius's past presented a kind of missing piece to the puzzle of his family, and his family's past also. So also, Thomas became very excited when he learned about Frederica's letter from our article. So first, Tom and I extend exchanged emails, of course regarding Frederika's letter, and Tom's research, leading to the wonderful result, that in February 2020, we had the pleasure to welcoming Tom Miller and his family in Hamburg. First, and at the National Archives, also where he and his family could take a look at the original letter. So this was a very, very moving occasion, of course to

Kathryn Gehred 

so he's a descendant of

Lucas Haasis  

of Ambrosius

Kathryn Gehred 

after he came to America, though, so he remarried when he was in America.

Lucas Haasis

Yes, he remarried there and build up a new family. And, so he never got back to Federica. Unfortunately. Maybe, because maybe his letters were also captured. We don't know. This is another missing puzzle piece. But yeah, he built up a new lifetime.

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow. I mean, and that's so cool. Just from doing genetic research, you know, you find a name maybe. But to find this, this letter, that is a little slice of life moment of time, I'm sure. That's very exciting. That's, that's so great.

Lucas Haasis

This is only one of 160,000 letters and stories to be told about the Prize Papers. And that's really just fantastic.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, thank you both so much for taking time out of your schedule to join me and talk about these letters. We've just got to have this huge, massive collection. I'm sure there's 1000s of more stories like this that are going to come out which is very exciting. So if you find any other interesting letters, if you have other documents you'd like to promote. You're welcome to come back.

Lucas Haasis

There will be many more stories to be told. And as Lisa said, 30 to 40 percent women's letters because it's male in transit. So women sent a lot of letters, and they were confiscated. So there are more stories to be told. Some advertising, of course, please, please visit our homepage, prizepapers.de. Browse the TNA catalog discovery, entering HCA 30 or 32 to search the entire collection at the National Archives. And you can already search and browse the Prize Papers portal with first documents from ten French ships, French prizes captured by the British. And, you can check our Twitter account for all the recent news and to stay updated, of course, and Lisa just wrote a brilliant, two brilliant case studies on two of the ships and please read it.

Kathryn Gehred 

I'll put all of these in the show notes. To my listeners, make sure you check all of these things out. Thank you very much for listening. I am as ever, your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much.