Knox College Library |
| Special Collections & Archives |
Jerusha Brewster Loomis was part of a close family and her family papers at Knox College included
many letters from her siblings. This letter received by the Farnham family in Galesburg was written by Jerusha's brother,
Augustus Ward Loomis and his wife Mary Ann. Ward, as he was known in the family, and his wife served as missionaries in
Chekiang Province, China (1845-1849) and the United States until late in the 1860s. In this letter they were writing from
a barque off the coast of China in perhaps 1845. Postage charges were computed then by the pieces of paper in a letter.
In order to save postage and to use every inch of space, the authors turned the letter 180 degrees and wrote between
the lines already written. Undaunted, the archives assistants in Special Collections rose to the challenge
and transcribed the letter.
