Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams

This undated letter is the earliest piece of correspondence by Jane Addams known to be extant.  It is replete with the misformed letters and the misspelled words of a child learning to write.  As part of the process of learning, Jane placed dots between the separate words and wrote sentences without punctuation.

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[Cedarville, Ill.]                                                                                                   [1868?]¹

DEAR ·. SISTER · ALICE·²

AS · I · TAKE · MY · PEN · IN · HAND · TO · LET · YOU · KNOW · THAT · I · AM · WEL · AT · PRESSENT ·  HOPIN · THAT · YOU · ARE · THE · SAME ·  DID · YOU · GET · DOWN · SAE ·  POOR · CITY ³ · FLEELS · VERY · LOMCSONE · SINCE · YOU · ARE · GONE ·  POOR · PONTO⁴ · FLEES · VERY · LOMSOME · TO ·  I · WAS · UP · TO · MR · TEMPLETONS⁵ · DAY · BEFOR · YESTERDAY · WITH · IDA · COBBLE⁶ · AND · COMMING · HOME · WE · WAS · COUGHT · IN · A · STOPM · AND · HATTO · STOP · IN · AT · NIS · COBBLES · TILL · THE · STORM · WAS · OVER ·  POLLY⁷ · CAME · HOME · TO · NIGHT · MARY⁸ · AND · ELLEN⁹ · HAS · GONE · 

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TO · TACHERMITTING¹⁰  · AND · POLLY · HAS · GONE · TO · DED ·  POLLY · PAPA · ELLEN · MARY · SENDS · THIRE · LOVE · AND · I · SEND · LOVE · AND A BIG · [kiss symbol drawn in].  

AL, printed in pencil (Jane Addams Papers Project, DeLoach Collection; JAPM, 1: 115-16; JAP, 1:83-84).

1.  The letter was probably written in 1868, before Jane Addams’s father John Huy Addams married Anna Haldeman.

2.  Jane’s sister Alice was a boarding student at Rockford Female Seminary in Rockford, Ill., from the fall of 1866, when she enrolled in the preparatory course, until 1872, when she graduated from the collegiate program.  She had been at home for a visit.

3.  Kitty, a pet cat.

4.  Ponto, the family dog.

5.  Farmer Alexander Templeton (b. 1835?) born in Pennsylvania, worked six hundred acres in Buckeye Township, Stephenson County., Ill., and lived in the village of Cedarville.

6.  Ida Coble (b. 1860?), born in Illinois, was the daughter of Julia A. Coble (1833?-1914) and cabinetmaker Daniel P. Coble (1836?-66), both born in Pennsylvania.

7.  Addams family housekeeper Mary "Polly" Beer.

8.  Jane Addams’s oldest sister Mary, who acted in the role of a mother to Jane in Jane's youth.

9.  Ellen, whose last name is unknown, was working in the Addams home as a hired domestic helper.  Addams family correspondence indicates that Ellen had relatives in the Cedarville area with whom she may have lived; however, by the summer of 1869, she planned to go east.  She is not listed in the Addams family household in the U.S. census of 1870.

10.  Teachers’ meetings for instructors associated with the Union Sunday School were held regularly, and both Jane’s father and her sister Mary were involved.  The Stephenson County  Sunday School Union was part of the American Sunday School Union movement started in 1824 to promote secular and religious education in rural areas and emerging communities throughout the United States.  In Cedarville, the interdenominational Union Sunday School, begun in 1868, usually met in the Lutheran and Reformed Church, located on Cedar Street.