BOUCK WHITE TARRED AND FEATHERED ON WIFE'S COMPLAINT
Dragged From Bed by Twelve Autoists, Taken 13 Miles From Home, Stripped and Lashed. WIFE TELLS OF CRUELTIES
Hotel Proprietor With Whom She Took Refuge Says He Ordered Radical From Place. PREACHER DENIES WHIPPING Found With William Sanger, He Asserts Blisters on His Neck Are Merely "Sunburn."
Hotel Sherwood
Hornell, N.Y.
E,M. Chase Prop.
May 30, 1921
My Darling,
This has been a lonesome day. Have thought of you all many times and have wandered in memory to the Decoration days when I was a small boy.
They had a small parade here to cemetery this afternoon for services, then back to Methodist Church for more exercises. I took everything in as I had nothing better to do. Expect to start out of here early in the morning and I will keep on the go.
Love unmeasured,
John
Editor's notes
What we now know as Memorial Day was originally Decoration Day. Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers.
Please note that this will be the last letter for a few weeks. I'm sure you've noticed I've gotten a bit behind and publication has become somewhat erratic. I hope to correct this. Thank you so much for following along. I'll be back with letters ready in mid-May. If you haven't tried out our sister podcasts, now would be a good time to catch up! We'll have the last of Season 1 published next Monday.
If you're new to this project, please consider going to our site and catching up with a few letters from the 1900-1910 era. The letters only take 3-5 minutes to read and you'll find the characters more fully develop if you read the letters chronologically.
John has excellent handwriting. However, in some instances, I cant decipher it. If I can't, I simply mark the spot with "xxx"s to signify thank the word isn't decipherable.
Check out our article in the New York Times!
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