The Century Chest Collection

Halsell Family Package - Letters and photos

(Transcribed from the original)

To my dear grand or great grandchildren,

Although my son Herold who will be twenty-one the first of June & is in his third years work at Harvard has written the family history  I feel I cannot close the package that will come to you so many years after I am gone without saying a few little words to you.

First I want you if you can to think of me as your far away mother and as loving you away from the distance of time. For indeed you are very near to me at least in the spirit. And I see you living happy & useful lives & accomplishing the work & reaching the ideals that we who lived so long ago worked & prayed for but had to leave unfinished. I am sorry this package could not have been better in many ways but there has been need of much haste in its preparation, hence some of its faults and due to that –
Always with much love, your long ago mother.

Katherine S. Halsell

Monday April the twenty-first Nineteen hundred & thirteen –