B. TRANSCRIBED AND ANNOTATED LETTER WRITEN BY CATHERINE “KITTY” SPENCE PITTS IN 1828
(Kitty was the mother of my Great Grandmother Ellen Nancy Pitts Allen.)
With a significant amount of time and research I have been able to identify many of the people mentioned in the 1828 letter of my Great Great Grandmother Kitty [Grandma Kitty]. After the footnotes is an abbreviated family tree to show the relationships of the people mentioned. The original handwritten letter was transcribed in 1954 by my first cousin one time removed, Ethel Briggs Cook (daughter of Roberta Richardson Allen Briggs, my Grandpa Lambeth Shelton Allen’s oldest surviving sister) and shared with me by my Aunt Nancy Ellen Allen Haeger in 1992.
Kitty was about 27 and moving with her husband Dr. George Richardson Pitts7 and their three young sons6 from Westmoreland County, Virginia to St. Louis, Missouri. Her husband would purchase land in St Charles, Missouri in 1831. Kitty’s father Thomas Spence had died six years earlier.
Louisville, Kentucky, May 7, 1828
My Dear Mother1 and Sisters2,3,4,5:
I seat myself to inform you of my health and the health of my children6 which is not very good at this time. Traveling from Alexandria [Virginia] to Wheeling [on the Ohio River, now in West Virginia, a distance of approximately 281 miles] in a wagon, you have no idea what we all went through. It can’t be expressed on paper, we had but four fair days while travelling on land, (which was 16 days), about four of us [herself and three young boys with husband George probably walking or riding] cramped in one wagon besides the baggage, which will give you some little idea of my suffering. And part of the time I was very sick, but Thank God for the kind attention of my husband and the aide of medicine I was spared to reach this place. [She may have been pregnant with their fourth son Thomas.]
We came from Wheeling [seems to be about 370 miles from Wheeling to Louisville, Kentucky on the Ohio River] in the steamboat. I met with a great many ladies on board, some I was very much pleased with and some I disliked very much notwithstanding they were all very polite and attentive to me. Such elegant accommodations I never saw anywhere as I saw while on board the Waverly, for that was the name of the boat we came on. I hope The Lady Washington will have the same advantages as I should be very comfortably situated; for that is the name of the one we shall go on from here to St. Louis [down the Ohio River and up the Mississippi River which appears to be further in miles than from Wheeling to Louisville]. I have been fortunate to meet with one of the most amiable and agreeable ladys [sic], to be a stranger, I ever saw. She is now in the same house and going on the same boat and to the same place where I am going. No sister could have been kinder or more attentive to me and my children.
I see nothing but rich land and fine fat horses and cows and the people hearty and strong and all do for themselves, no calling on servants, and they all appear to be happy. We put up one night at an old Dutchman’s, and if I had been as happy and cheerful as I used to be, I should have enjoyed myself very much, the way they talk and their manner is truly diverting. Dr. Pitts and brother Franklin8 and Mr. Struck [no idea] and Sanford and my Sukey9 and the negroes are truly diverted with them and particularly with the old woman who is nearly as thick as a hogshead and no taller than Eliza [no idea] who lived with us. She said she would not be plagued with a negro for the world, they spoil white people and make them good for nothing. Brother Franklin8 called on one of his servants to go to the pump and get some water for him to wash, she was astonished and said, no, no, go yourself and she made him wash his neck clean and talked to him as if she had been acquainted all her life. Oh, it would be impossible for me to describe the different changes and scenes I have witnessed and enjoyed. We stopt [sic] about 4 or 5 hours in the town of Sinsinati [Cincinnati]. Dr Pitts took me to see the Museum. There I saw the greatest sights I ever saw. I saw poor Charlotte Temple and her little infant.10 She was the most beautiful creature I ever saw. I saw all the kinds of birds and animals and every curiosity that can be mentioned on this earth, it was truly ———- once more, for it appears for the last six weeks everything has been crooked, for you will see from the way this letter is written the state my mind is in. I fear you can’t make it out but you must get Brother Edward11 or Brother Henry12 to read it for you. We expect to leave this place in 2 or 3 days for St. Louis.
Do mother keep up your spirits as you formerly did as you know it would distress us much to know you were still dejected, hope it is all for the best. I met with cousin Willie Lambeth13 here, he appeared to be very glad to see me and has been very polite and kind to me. I feel fatigued and must draw this letter to a close by requesting you give my love to every sister and brother and cousin and niece and nephew I have. Sister Amelia2 you must write to me. You don’t know what a satisfaction it would be, also Jane for Max3 and yourself, tell Cousin Sally and Mary [??] they must also write. Give my love to Ami Tisson (Lisson)14, Betsy Hutt15, Mr. Hutt15, Mr. —-mi and all my friends in Westmoreland, and tell them I shall not forget them while life shall last and I hope they will ——- When you see poor Jemima and Mr. Jamron [Dameron]4 give my sincere love and well wishes to them. Tell them they must write to me. Tell poor little Mary Brown she must write to her Aunt Kitty for I sincerely love her.16 Tell cousin Betsy17 I often think of her. Doctor Pitts7 joins me in love to you and all my relatives and particularly to brother Henry12.
(Signature destroyed) [my Aunt Nancy Ellen Allen Haeger added the following] Written by Catherine E. (Kitty) Spence Pitts, my great grandmother [my second great grandmother]. Mother of my paternal grandmother [my great grandmother] Ellen Nancy Pitts Allen who was born after Kitty and Dr. Pitts got to St. Louis.
Copied by Ethel [Briggs] Cook [1890-1978] (granddaughter of one of my grandmother, Ellen Nancy Pitts Allen’s, older sisters [although thirty three years older, Ethel was actually Nancy’s first cousin, the daughter of Roberta Richardson Allen Briggs (1864-1950), Aunt Nancy’s father’s oldest sister]) in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1954.
Letter addressed to Mrs. Catherine Spence, Westmoreland Court House, Virginia. (Middle initial not plain.)
FOOTNOTES:
Kitty’s sister, Amelia, died three years later leaving two very small children. Her mother, Catherine Spence, died about five years later.
1Catherine “Caty” Sanford Spence, about 62 (circa 1766-1833), my third great grandmother.
2Amelia, 33, 1795-1831: married to Major Henry Hungerford12 since 1818 and still living in Westmoreland. Henry and Amelia had had four children who all had been born and died between 1819 and 1825. They would have another son in 1829 and another daughter in 1830 before Amelia herself died in 1831. Major Henry Hungerford remarried in 1834 and had three more children.
3Jane, about 25, (born circa 1803, death date unknown): married to Henry Newton, possibly since 1820; her father calls her Jane Newton in his Will of 1822. Jane may have had a son, Max, referenced at the end of this letter, who could have been about 3 or so, old enough to talk, but not old enough to write a letter, but I find no further proof of this.
4Jemima, about 17, born about 1811, died before 1830: married to William M. Dameron a few months prior to this letter in Dec 1827 and still living in Westmoreland County.
5Mary Ann Elizabeth, 14 (1814-1859), may possibly have been another sister: she is listed in some DNA matches on Ancestry as being a sister, although she was not named in either of her parents’ wills nor does Kitty name her in the closing of this letter as she does her other sisters. In 1834, about three and a half years after Kitty’s sister Amelia Spence Hungerford died, her husband Major Henry Hungerford married a Mary Ann Elizabeth Spence, but I have not found any definitive information as to the parents of this Mary Ann.
6Kitty and George had three boys at this point, my great granduncles, born in Westmoreland before the move to Missouri: Benjamin R Pitts (1822-1854), 5 years and 9 months old; Oliver G Pitts (1823-1864), 4 years and about 11 months old, and Walter S Pitts (1825-1904), 3 years and 3 months old.
7Her husband George Richardson Pitts (about 34, circa 1794 – circa 1845), my second great grandfather, was a medical doctor.
8Probably Benjamin Franklin Pitts Sr. (about 25, circa 1803 – circa 1839), Dr. Pitts’ younger brother, and therefore my second great granduncle. His son, Benjamin Franklin Pitts Jr. (1840-1912), is called “Franklin” in the 1850 U.S. Census and elsewhere. Two years after this letter was written, in the 1830 U.S. Census for Essex County, Virginia, Franklin Sr. was a single man with three enslaved males between the ages of 10 and 99. Three years prior to this letter, in 1825, he had married Sarah Taliaferro Jones in Caroline County, Virginia. At the time this letter was written his wife was about four months pregnant. Their daughter Sarah Jones Pitts was born 10 October 1828 and, sadly, his wife died less than a month later on 5 November 1828 in Richmond, Virginia. I found descendants of Sarah Jones Pitts on Ancestry, but she must have been raised by someone else as she is not listed with her father in the 1830 census nor with her stepmother and four half siblings in the 1840 census. B. F. Pitts Senior next married Susan Sale in November of 1830; they had three girls (Mary Emily, Zela, and Roxana) and a boy (Benjamin Franklin Pitts, Junior) who was born in March of 1840. Susan Sale Pitts is listed as head of house in the June 1840 Census so B F Senior must have died either prior to the birth of his son or shortly thereafter. This family plays a significant role in sections J. and especially K. (which details the murder of Mary Emily Pitts by her husband) below.
9I do believe Sanford (which happened to also be Kitty’s mother’s maiden name) and Sukey were two or the individuals they enslaved.
10From Wikipedia: “Charlotte Temple is a novel by British-American author Susanna Rowson, originally published in England in 1791 … It tells the story of a schoolgirl, Charlotte Temple, who is seduced by a British officer and brought to America, where she is abandoned, pregnant, sick and in poverty … The cultural impact of Rowson’s novel materialised as a grave was built for Charlotte in Trinity Churchyard, New York City … but no one knows if anyone is actually interred in the vault.” In 1828, the year of this letter, a sequel was published called Charlotte’s Daughter. In her 1848 letter Grandma Kitty refers to her daughter Virginia, whose middle initial was C, as Lotte and Lotty. Could it be that two years after this 1828 letter she named her first daughter Virginia Charlotte after the impact this novel and the visit to the museum had on her?
11Kitty’s brother, my second great granduncle, Edward Spence, 38 (1790-1847), who lived in Westmoreland County. Aunt Nancy states in her family history that he “served as a captain in the war of 1812-1814. He commanded a company of artillery.”
12Kitty’s brother-in-law, Henry Hungerford, 40, (1788-1866), her sister Amelia’s husband who also lived in Westmoreland County and had become an Army Major in the War of 1812. Henry’s mother, Anne Catherine Washington Hungerford, was the second cousin once removed of President George Washington; they shared the same second great grandfather, Col. John Washington (born in 1632 in Essex, England and died in 1677 in Westmoreland, Virginia).
13William Meredith Lambeth, 28, (1800-1853). There is much to be said about “Willie Lambeth” (including his will written in 1851 which is transcribed in G. below) and his family and the influence they appear to have had on my great grandmother, Ellen Nancy Pitts, the daughter of Kitty, who wasn’t born for another 11 years after this letter was written. So much influence, in fact, that Ellen Nancy would name her only son Lambeth Shelton Allen. In 1828 “Cousin Willie Lambeth” was not just the brother-in-law of George Richardson Pitts’s older brother Thomas H. Pitts (Thomas H. Pitts had married Willie Lambeth’s sister Frances Bernard Lambeth in 1813), after quite of bit of internet digging I am happy to have discovered that my early supposition of Dr. Pitts and Cousin Willie Lambeth actually being cousins (based on the fact that the maiden name of the mothers of both William M Lambeth and George Richardson Pitts was Richardson) is indeed a fact. The proof of this is in a court case filed in 1808 by Margaret Richardson (transcribed in E. below) which states the names of her siblings, including the names of her sisters’ spouses. This was also an important find as it filled in the family connection mentioned in the wills of Margaret Richardson (transcribed in F. below) and Thomas Pitts, my third great grandfather.
14Neither Tisson (or Lisson) appears in the U.S. Censuses for Westmoreland County in 1820 or 1830.
15There are Hutts in both the 1820 and 1830 U.S. censuses for Westmoreland. The daughter of Kitty’s sister Amelia, Amanda Hungerford, who wasn’t born yet, would marry Joseph W. Hutt.
16There are Browns in the U.S. Censuses for Westmoreland in 1820 and 1830, but I don’t know how she would be “Aunt Kitty” to one, other than, perhaps, to show affection, as I can find no evidence of one of Kitty’s sisters marrying a Brown.
17Possibly Elizabeth Sutton, daughter of Kitty’s half-sister, Susannah. Or maybe Betsy Hutt15, mentioned previously.
familyties3.com 