"My Dear Darling Wife"

Here's the thing, folks. I check Ebay daily for several Ainsworth-related things, including another copy of the Chester's Camp postcard (or any other Chester's Camp postcard). As a result I daily have to scroll through pages of irrelevant things that happen to have the word "Chester" in their description. It's tiresome. Before I started this adventure, I never knew there were so many places called Chester in the world. I knew of Dick Tracy, of course, but it never registered in my mind that his creator was Chester Gould. I never thought anyone would buy or sell Chester Cheetah memorabilia. And it never occurred to me that a pornographic cartoonist (by the name of Chester) might do such a booming business on Ebay.

— what? Yes, go right ahead. I'll wait.

. . . . . . . . . 

… See? I told you, didn't I?

Anyway. The point is: I think that after the sacrifice of so many hours in the service of Ainsworth, I can be forgiven if I post something that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Ainsworth, but that I came across in one of my Ebay searches and simply couldn't pass over, because it's too cute. Plus I got it cheap.

T. Christ Letter 1872

Dr. Theodore S. Christ was about 42 years old when he wrote that letter. If unsourced information in a family tree I've found on Ancestry.com is correct, he and Sarah Thompson had just been married the previous December.

Some of his expressions and odd emphasis on the first page ("growing more interesting," "improve in weight, if not in flesh," "continue to improve") make me suspect that perhaps Sarah was pregnant at the time. If so, the child did not live.

We find Theodore and Sarah together in the 1880 Census, by which time Sarah was 40 years old and had borne two daughters and a son, the oldest of them born in 1876. The census describes Theodore as a farmer, but in the 1872 letter we have people addressing him as "doctor." In the 1900 Census, Theodore is described as a physician. He is also a widower (the unsourced family tree gives 1887 as the year of Sarah's death), with the two daughters still at home, unmarried, while the son (Theodore Jr.) is not to be found with them — let us hope he was away at college. The family tree gives 1910 as the year of Theo Sr.'s death.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this poke into someone's private correspondence. Tomorrow it's back to business.