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Format: 2024-03
Format: 2024-03

Virginia J. Randolph Trist to Nicholas P. Trist, 26 May 1839

Faithful to my promise, dearest —, I shall spend an hour every Sunday in writing all my childish recollections of my dear grandfather, which are sufficiently distinct to relate to you. My memory seems crowded with them, and they have the vividness of realities; but all are trifles in themselves,...

Extract from Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 13 Feb. 1856

No. 3. I have found it impossible to resume my pen until now when I have an hour or so of leisure before turning my attention to the daily cares & duties which admit of no postponement. The decay of my grandfather’s fortune was owing, as you know, to various causes, but to none more than the...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 18 Feb. 1856

… The house at Poplar Forest was very pretty and pleasant. It was of brick, one story in front, and, owing to the falling of the ground, two in the rear. It was an exact octagon, with a centre-hall twenty feet square, lighted from above. This was a beautiful room, and served as a dining-room....

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 22 Feb. 1856

Sent to Mr Randall with alterations or additions which I no longer remember, but the whole letter omitted in Mr Randall’s book No. 5. This letter is a continuation of the one of the 18h and I begin by correcting several small, unimportant inaccuracies. My grandfather’s visits to Bedford were...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 2 Mar. 1856

I have been prevented from writing, my dear Mr Randall, by the illness of one of my sons, and the absence of a confidential domestic who has for years been a sort of right hand on all household matters. I resume my pen uncertain how soon I may be compelled to lay it down. You ask for the...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 13 Mar. 1856

I know not where to begin in reply to your enquiries, my dear Mr Randall, for many subjects press upon me at once. I will therefore take up the one to which I have already alluded. You say in one of your letters “From some remark that dropped from Wormeley, a former slave in your family, as in...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 27 Mar. 1856

Enclosed you have part of a letter, which I began a week ago. Sudden and severe cold which confined me some days to my bed, prevented me from going on with it: I send it in it’s unfinished state. Yours of the 22nd with it’s enclosures, reached me yesterday. I am not strong enough to write much to...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Joseph Coolidge, 24 Oct. 1858

I am just from church, a church originally planned by Grandpapa, where I heard a good sermon from an Episcopalian Clergyman, a young man, the Revd Mr. Butler. I have been talking freely with my brother Jefferson on the subject of the ‘yellow children’ and will give you the substance of our...