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Mabel writes about travels

In our world of electronic and digital communications, one wonders what evidence of our day-to-day lives will exist for our descendants in the next century. Modern technology has given us the ability to be in almost constant touch with one another. But, will our emails and texts still exist a hundred years from now? For decades, letter writing was often an everyday occurrence for most people. Keeping in touch meant sitting down with pen and paper. Receiving a letter was often an exciting event, especially from someone miles away. And, for many, including Alexander Graham Bell and his family, these letters were something to be kept, not simply discarded once read. The Bells were profuse writers and as a result, their story can be told today through thousands of letters.

Born in Scotland in 1847, Alexander Graham Bell lived a unique life. Influenced by his father, Melville, a professor of elocution, and his deaf mother, Eliza; the loss of his brothers, Melville and Edward, to Consumption; and marriage to his deaf pupil, Mabel Hubbard, Bell left a legacy to the world that few could imagine living without. How this came to pass is best revealed through the letters between these individuals. Here, we present those letters to you.

Mabel writes about travels Back to video

Mabel Bell thanks Eliza for Elsie’s gifts, including a bond and original poetry. Writing while traveling, she describes a Norfolk stopover, noting the massive agricultural exports and the exhausting thirty-six hour shifts of laborers loading cotton and strawberries for transport.

Office of Baltimore, Boston and Providence S.S. Co. Norfolk, Va. May 23rd, 1879

I am much ashamed and very sorry to think how long I have let you wait for Elsie’s and my thanks for your very kind and pretty presents. The ten dollars went to buy a United States baby bond and the verses are put away to keep until the little one is old enough to read them and know how much her Grandmama loved her. It isn’t every day a baby has verses written in her honor, and I am much pleased that Elsie should be among the distinguished few, and thank you very much for taking so much trouble for her.

You must be wondering where we are, I have chosen my paper on purpose. No we are not in Norfolk Virginia nor yet in Boston, Mass from whence this letter will be sent. We left Washington Monday night steamed down the Potomac and Chesapeak Bay to Norfolk, spent an aimless day there waiting for the Wm. Crane to take in her cargo of enormous bales of cotton and countless boxes of strawberries and peas. Such a quantity I never saw before, the whole large building covering at least two acres I should think was full of them, and as fast as the negroes got a space cleared more boxes were brought in by wagons and by boat. The negroes they said had been working thirty-six hours without stopping for food or sleep, at fifteen cents an hour. The strawberries, themselves were selling in Norfolk at five cents a quart, in Boston they will be thirty-five…

Read the continuation of this letter in next weeks Bell Letters.

The Bell Letters are annotated by Bell Homestead National Historic Site

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