Queen of Hounds

All of Jessie Clark (Ring) Garrett’s children wrote to her regularly, and all obviously loved her dearly. I selected this 1906 letter from her daughter, also named Jessie, because of the sweet salutation: “Dearest thing in the world - “

One of the very best parts of processing personal collections like this one are finding love letters. Here are a few examples I’ve found from Pandora Briggs to E. Peter Garrett!

A visit to Saginaw, MI in the early 1980s.

At Highlands, undated.

Undated.

While correspondence makes up most of the collection, there are also plenty of little treasures to be found!

The beginning goals of this project have been to obtain intellectual control over the material, re-folder and remove "dangerous" material (like metal or rubber bands), and begin to create a detailed inventory (called a Finding Aid by archivists!) As of April 1, 2020, I've identified material going as far back as 1824 and as recent as the mid-2000s. The bulk of the collection I've processed appears to be correspondence collected by Jessie Emma (Simonton) Garrett (b.1858 - d.1943) and by Jessie Clark (Ring) Garrett (b.1885 - d.1947) The bulk is primarily family correspondence, with hundreds if not over one thousand letters exchanged between the Jessies, their husbands, and their children. The letters come from all over the world, and across at least 6 states including Washington, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Wyoming, and New York. As I'm processing this collection, with the help of Alden Garrett, I'm also working on fully flushing out a family tree that will include all of the Merrills, Rings, and Garretts. More on that to come!

Most of the material comes in looking like this:

All of the material is removed from the original envelope and rehoused in archival, acid-free folders which give the materials better room to breathe! Luckily, the quality of the paper over-all has been very good. After refoldering, the boxes end up looking like this: