Series 25 - Edgar Hewitt letters

25pp

The Edgar Hewitt letters were held by Mary E. Edgar of Aghadoey, County Donegal who provided them to the University of Michigan/Bentley Historical Library's Immigration Sources Project on 22 July 1977. Copies of the manuscripts were then provided to Kerby A. Miller by JoEllen McNergney Vinyard and Francis X. Blouin of the Bentley Historical Library.

Materials pertaining to five letters written between 1885 and 1889 by members of the Edgar family living in Iowa to their family in County Donegal.
Per Kerby A. Miller (via Mary E. Edgar): ‘Five letters: 4 from Ellen Edgar Hewitt; 1 from Catherine Edgar. The letters from Ellen Edgar Hewitt are written to her cousin, Robert Edgar, the grandfather of the donor. Ellen was from Ballydavid, Co. Donegal; she emigrated when young; her family was (and is) Protestant, small farmers, relatively poor. She married Hewitt, but whether in Ireland or the US is not known; he, too, was from Co. Donegal. She was his second wife, and he had a son by his first marriage; they had no children of their own. Although most of these letters to her cousin, Robert, concern a farm she had acquired for him in Iowa, he never came to claim it. Therefore, eventually she sold the farm and sent him the money from the sale. This money made it possible, it is believed, for the Edgar family to stay on their farm in Ireland, where they live now. The 1889 letter is from Robert Edgar's daughter, Catherine, who went to join Ellen Edgar Hewitt in Iowa when she was 16 years old. She never returned to Ireland, and married a man in Iowa named Johnson.’
The series includes: Miller’s notes on the family derived from Mary E. Edgar’s 1977 letter of provision; Miller’s transcripts of the letters; the 1977 letter of provision from Mary E. Edgard to the University of Michigan/Bentley Historical Library's Immigration Sources Project; and reproductions of the letters.