Copyright Notice

Facts like names, dates, and places cannot be copyrighted, and you are free to use them however you wish. But a narrative is a creative work product and therefore subject to copyright. Unless written permission has been obtained from the copyright holder, all other usage of this work is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0. You may copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only, under the following conditions: (1) you must credit the compiler; (2) you must provide a link to the license; and (3) you must indicate if any changes were made.

A great deal of material on the family of Elizabeth (Abbot) Bowditch has been preserved and handed down in the family. This includes letters, pictures, and land records, that were saved by her daughter Georgiana Bowditch. Additional material and correspondence was acquired by Frederick Tryon Bowditch during the preparation of his book The Bowditch Family of Salem, Massachusetts - North Carolina Branch 1524-1964 .

Most of the material was sorted, probably by Frederick Bowditch, and stored in 10x12 inch envelopes. Some additional material, including several letters, was found in two small metal boxes. The letters have been re-examined, and are now stored in folders in chronological order, generally with a separate folder for each letter writer.

The letters were written by friends and family members of Elizabeth (Abbot) Bowditch between about 1840 and 1920. Elizabeth was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1821, and moved from there to her husband Joseph Henry Bowditch's home in North Carolina immediately after their marriage in 1845. Most of the letters were written to Elizabeth in North Carolina, but some were written by Elizabeth herself, and others were written between other family members and friends. They are generally complete and in good to very good condition, although some are torn or have parts missing. A few are charred at folded edges, possibly from a fire that destroyed Elizabeth and Joseph's house in 1880. Some include "cross writing," the practice of turning the page 90 degrees and continuing a letter by overwriting previously written text in order to save weight and/or paper.

An expanded name index has been created for the letters that includes everyone mentioned in them (other than those who have not been identified). It lists their parents; birth, marriage, and death information (when known); for some people, additional information about them, possibly with links to external web sites; and the authors and dates of the letters mentioning the person. The dates are linked to the transcriptions of the corresponding letters.

Transcriptions of these letters may be viewed using the following links, listed (generally) by the name of the writer. While transcribing these letters I have attempted to leave the spelling unchanged. However, some capitalization has been added at the beginning of sentences, an occasional comma or period has been added, and paragraph breaks have been added at logical places to make reading easier. The originals were generally written without paragraph breaks, and in many places without capitalization. In a few cases, uncertain words are followed by a "[?]," indecipherable words are indicated by "[__?__]," and missing parts are indicated by "[____]." Bracketed text in italics contains explanatory notes, and is not part of the original letter.