"…and I sit down to write to my dear little girl wondering if she is thinking of me as I am of her."
Mary C. Stone letter to Elizabeth Stone, October 22, 1893, Ms 77458. Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, CT
Elizabeth“Bessie” Stone began her studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in the fall of 1893. Over the next few years she and her widowed mother, Mary Catherine Welles Stone, of Hartford, wrote to each other routinely. Each described local happenings, discussed family matters, and generally related the events of their lives. While some of their concerns remain familiar, in other ways their lives were very different from the lives of typical college students and their parents today.
In October 1893, Mary wrote about her concerns with a new servant. "My present incumbent is quite inexperienced, and is, I fear, not going to prove a success, though we will see how the washing turns out. I shall let her go on with that by herself and see how she succeeds." Running the household was Mary's primary task. This comes through in many of her letters and is also something Bessie understood well. When Bessie replied to her mother, she stated, "I rather expected another letter during the week, but from what you wrote I guessed that your servant did not stay long and I know how busy you must be with everything to do yourself. I do hope you can get on the track of some good girl before long."
As the years went by, Bessie's schoolwork took more of her time, and her letters home grew less frequent. Mary commented on this in January 1896. "We were very grateful for your good letter which came on Monday, and have thought of you many times during the week and wished we could hear again."
Mary was finally able to visit her daughter in 1896. She sent a thank you note to Bessie in March: "I want to tell you how much I enjoyed the day I spent in Northampton and to thank you for giving me so much of your time when I dare say you had every moment planned out for some good and profitable work."
More than a century later, a "good and profitable" connection remains visible in the letters of Mary Stone and her daughter Bessie.
All of the letters may be found in the Connecticut Historical Society's Stone-Welles-Todd Family Papers, 1744-1976, Ms 77458. The collection is open for research and more information is available by searching the online catalog.
