Series 11 - Rose McCormack Williams letters

29pp

Copies of the Rose McCormack Williams letters provided by Rose Olive McDonnell to Kerby A. Miller on 18 January 1978, O'Donnell's correspondence with Miller, and drafts of Miller's transcript of Williams' 10 July 1879 letter.
Rose McCormack was born around 1842 in Cummerstown, County Westmeath and emigrated with her family to New Orleans around 1850, not long after which both parents and three of her siblings died from either cholera or accidents, leaving her orphaned at a very young age. Rose's second letter details these circumstances and where she and her surviving siblings are as of writing in 1879, including her going to work as soon as she came of age and currently running a grocery store in New Orleans. Professor Kerby A. Miller views this letter as a kind of 'autobiographical letter' and writes the following of this genre: 'less common but more valuable, are memoirs that are framed, almost incidentally, in letter formats. In these documents, the autobiographical data are presented in chronological and/or topically linear, consistent, and coherent formats. Also, the autobiographical data comprise most of the total document. I.e., the letter is primarily a vehicle for the conveyance of the memoir.'

Miller's research related to Rose McCormack Williams, as well as alternate copies of the letters, is located in P155/11/5.