LETTERS, RECORDS, ETC.
This is the tip of the iceberg: I have lots and lots of old papers, pictures, letters, etc. The selection that I have transcribed, scanned, and presented below illustrates the manuscripts in this history section so far.
An old register of births, deaths, and marriages appears to have been cut from the Orr family bible. From this document it emerges that James Orr was 40 when he married Anna Eleonore Peters, who was just 21. They had ten children. Their daughter Mary Eleonore, whose young life was so disrupted by the war, did not marry until she was 33. But who was Cousin Rea's father? Clues emerge from old letters and envelopes.
Elizabeth Bryan Townsend, who married Mary Eleonore Orr's only son James Morton Townsend, wrote about her mother-in-law in a few short pages dated April 20, 1923. This would have been about three weeks after the elder Mrs. Townsend's death at the age of 82. We get a fresh angle on the woman who wrote the Orr manuscript.
The Bryan letters were written around and about the time of Corbin Braxton Bryan's and Mary Sydney Caldwell Scott's marriage in 1882. They include love letters and a fine letter to Mary's father asking for her hand in marriage. The two were already secretly engaged.
