Friday, May 3, 2019

Discovery Reunites Pages of Letters






Melissa Homestead, professor of English, made an interesting discovery recently in the Archives & Special Collections that reunited pages of two letters separated in two distinct collections.

While doing research for her book on the relationship between Willa Cather and Edith Lewis, Homestead found a fragment of a letter in the Mary Lou Karch Collection that belonged with another fragment (the first page) located in the Charles Cather Collection. The letter was written by Earl Brewster and sent to Edith Lewis in condolence of Willa Cather’s death. Brewster was married to Achsah Barlow-Brewster, Lewis’s friend and college roommate.

Homestead recognized Brewster’s handwriting in the fragment and it was obvious from the content that it was part of a condolence letter. Mary Lou Karch, of the Karch Collection, is the daughter of the nurse that took care of Edith Lewis late in her life. Charles Cather was Willa Cather’s nephew, and when Lewis died in 1972, she left manuscripts and letters in her possession to Charles and to his sister, Helen Cather Southwick. Homestead also informed Ducey about another letter split between two collections, one by Lewis to E.K. Brown, whom she authorized to write a biography of Cather, 
about Cather’s religious life.

In both instances, University Archivist Mary Ellen Ducey will bring the letter fragments together in one collection and leave documentation in the both collections about the move.

This is a great example of how archivists and researchers work together. Researchers working in a collection may have a deeper knowledge of the contents of a collection through their focused work and can work with the archivist to enhance information for future researchers. 


(Photographs: Top: Edith Lewis' letter to E.K. Brown; Middle: Professor Homestead working in the Archives & Special Collections; Bottom: Earl Brewter's letter to Edith Lewis.)

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