by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist
I’ve written many times at the Beehive about how much I enjoy, as a processing archivist, solving the mysteries in our collections. Not long ago, I cataloged a letter that gave me a chance to flex my investigatory muscles again.

The letter was written by someone named Sarah in New Braintree, Massachusetts, to her “dear Cousin.” The only date given is March 1, but from the paper and the writing, I guessed it was written in the mid-1800s.
There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering in the letter. Sarah mostly shares family news and complains about the weather, “household cares,” and all the sewing she’s done lately, presumably for income. She writes, “I have cut about fifty dresses the past year and a good part of them I have made.”
But obviously our researchers are better served when we can be as specific as possible about who wrote what, when, and where. Thankfully, Sarah name-drops several people like bread crumbs for me (creative spelling and punctuation hers).
Father had quite an ill turn while Jesse was at Worcester […] Lucious Prouty is going to move to this town he has bought the Pepper place, her fathers […] Miss Wood, Dwights lady has been teaching here this winter […] Hattie Prouty has been up here, and she says Dwight is going to fix up their house […] Lizzie Whipple has closed her school […] Frank is at Poughkeepsie hopes to recieve his diploma about the first of April […] Grandpa Whipple has been quite feeble all winter
It’s a little embarrassing to admit how often these investigations come down to random internet searches. It’s a question of forming specific enough queries. I usually start with the most unusual names, sometimes paired with a place or date. Searching for Lucius Prouty and New Braintree quickly got me to a genealogical website that lists him and his wife Mary Ann Pepper.
As I gather information, I refine my searches with more names and look for definitive sources. It wasn’t long before I found a digitized copy of a printed Prouty genealogy, and it seemed like I was on the right track. Not only would the dates be about right, but several of the names Sarah mentions can be found in Lucius’s branch of the family. (Lucius even had a sister named Sarah, but I decided she couldn’t be our correspondent because she was married. Our Sarah apparently wasn’t, writing forlornly, “It has been a hard winter for old people, and old maids.”)
The clincher was Lucius’s brother Dwight, who married a Miss Maria Wood in 1874. Not only did this confirm for me that I had the right family, but I also suspected it gave me the date of Sarah’s letter. What better reason to fix up a house than an upcoming marriage?
So these were clearly the people Sarah was talking about, but who was she? Stay tuned to the Beehive to find out.