History at Home: A Lucky Find

Will and Margaret Carpenter.
They were married in  1901

After my mother died, we found a couple of cardboard boxes full of papers, which had apparently been sent to her after her parents passed away. She probably intended to sort through them, but never got around to it. The papers are a jumble of my great-grandfather's business correspondence and personal letters between my grandparents, who were often separated because his business at that time, traveling throughout the midwest harvesting wheat, took him away from home. Both he and my grandmother were faithful correspondents. Their letters are factual and chatty, full of family news, plans that were never fulfilled -- and some that were. Both of they had very busy lives, with a lot of social activity based around the Baptist church they attended.


As a historical resource, these letters tell us a lot about the lives, the expectations, the responsibilities of a hard-working middle-class family. But in general, they weren't concerned with the events of the day. They were unaffected by Prohibition, for instance, because they were both teetotalers, having "taken the pledge" many years before.
But historical events pop out in unexpected places.
I was reading one letter, dated May 21, 1927, from my grandmother to my grandfather, and found a surprise at the end. They were discussing a move they were planning and how they would have their furniture moved in one weekend, which was mildly interesting. She closed, as she always did, with an exact description of her actions: "Well, I must close now, as I will just have time to drop this off at the Post Office in time for the last post."

But this time, there was one additional line at the end of the page, in an unusually loose, excited scrawl:

"Lindbergh made it!"  

About the famous flight