Letters from Our Ancestors

Our family has collected letters written by our ancestors in the 1850s and 1860s.  Those letters have been transcribed, and they are much easier to read.  The majority of these letters were written by members of the Stout family, a significant branch of our ancestors.  By reading them, you’ll learn much about both our family and our nation’s history.  Particularly of interest are the letters concerning the Civil War and how attitudes changed during that period.
 
To read the letters, click on this link:  Letters from Our Ancestors.  You’ll see a series of folders by the various writers.  Click on any folder to read the individual letters by that writer.  You should not need any particular software on your computer.   In each file you’ll see two transcriptions.  The first section is a literal transcription of the letter.  The original language, misspellings, and errors were included.  The second section is an interpretation of what we believe was the author’s original intent.  Be sure to cursor down the page to see both sections.

We have electronic scans of each original letter although they often are challenging to read.  If you’d like to see scans of one or more of the original letters, let us know.

There likely are more letters written by our ancestors in the homes of our family’s descendants today.   By making these transcriptions available to everyone, we hope more descendants will share the letters in their possession .   Your original letters will not be harmed or modified in any way, and they will be returned to you.

Thanks go to Sandy Brewer, wife of Bill Brewer, and to Susan Moore, wife of Jim Moore, for the transcriptions and to Preston Brewer for electronically scanning the original letters.   Their work represented a monumental effort.