Letter: To Charles B. Penrose, Esq., Carlisle, Penna.
from his sister Mary Penrose, 1839
“The mosquitos are so bad tis impossible to write”
Mary Penrose is writing from Point Celeste sugar plantation in Plaquemines Parish Louisiana to her brother Charles B. Penrose in Carlisle. She is urging him to help.1
Point Celeste, May 20, 1839 (Postmarked from New Orleans)
I have been waiting from day by day, my dear brother, in the hope of hearing from you. I had enclosed Mr. Kingsbury’s letters in which he urges me to write to you and beg you to go on to St. Louis and at least give the sanction of your presence in our business.2 As soon as I got them (for in consequence of some mistake I received them at the same time.) I did not write as I was so anxious you should get them & I knew it was too near the hour for the closing of the mail to do so without detaining them another day. I cannot express how hurt and disappointed I am that they should have elicited no reply. Surely my dear brother if you could not go on, you might have written and at least given me the benefit of your advice. Tis hard, I must say, to think if we had any one to step forward for us we might have not only independence but fortune. Both Mr. Kingsbury and Dr. Hoffman told me candidly that they felt a delicacy in [making] any decisive step for us as we had two brothers.
I was anxious too you should go on to St. Louis to see if you could recover the lot on which the large and elegant theater is now built. Mr. Bent had undertaken its recovery. Our blessed brother had offered him before his death $5000 for its recovery and the suit was to have been instituted immediately, but our brother’s death of course put a stop to it.3 Since which time Mr. Bent has thrown himself away by the most degrading, reckless, dissipation. The Col. was absent when we were in St. Louis and as Wilkinson has assured me, you positively go on to attend to our business. I thought it best the inquiry to the Col. should come from you, therefore I have never written Col. Strother on the subject. There were several letters passed from Mr. Bent & Col. Strother, but I can only find one from Mr. Bent. I will give you the extract from it, and probably you will be able to judge if it would be worthwhile to write to Col. Strother should you not be able to go on.
Dear Sir: I have been all day in search of Mr. Amelong—I have not yet found him. The Oceana goes down tomorrow and I will communicate more at large, Your father is entitled to 120 x 150 feet of the back part of the lot. Now shall I write to Col. Strother or will you undertake it. A letter from you will have tenfold weight, and let me beg, my dear brother, you will write to Mr. Kingsbury our agent. He won’t feel better satisfied did you take an interest in our business. We could get our landlord to cancel our lease without paying rent until the fifteenth of April (and we could not rent it.) This enables us to have the children and Ann with us for six weeks. Oh, would to God our property was settled then could we give them a permanent home. Mr. Wilkinson is just about starting for Kentucky and will probably visit Philadelphia before his return. Should you meet him let me beg you will endeavor to extend some little kindness and hospitality to him, for believe me, you could not repay one half the debt your family owe them.
Mary Ann sailed at half past three on Thursday afternoon for Tampa Bay.4 Her and the children were well. Will you give my best love to Valaria and say to her if she will write to me it will not only afford me the utmost pleasure but I will promise to answer to answer them with the greatest promptitude. And now my dear brother I have a request to prefer and I know not in what language to couch it in order to render it successful. Mary Ann tells me you have an excellent portrait of yourself. Now tell Valaria5 the greatest boon she can grant as she has the original to give it to us as long as we live. On our death (which may not be a very distant period) it will be returned to her. Oh! She does not know the great, great, gratification this would give, or she should surely not deny this request.
May I beg you will answer this immediately and you will not let your letters be so much like angels visits—You might also urge the two boys to write. I think I have some claim on them Elly. Kiss all for us and may a merciful God bless and protect you all is [the] ardent prayer of your sister Mary. The mosquitos are so bad tis impossible to write, you must pardon the wretched scrawl. Ann begs her best love to you.6
While people are familiar with the Suffragist movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries that sought to gain equal rights for women, it is hard for us today to imagine that there were women who fought against this.
1 Mary Penrose (c. 1800-1886) is Charles B. Penrose’s sister. She never married and died in Philadelphia on March 31, 1886, aged 87 years.
2 Charles B. Penrose’s father Clement B. Penrose (1771-1829) was appointed one of the Land Commissioners of the Louisiana Territory by President Thomas Jefferson in 1805 and moved to St. Louis.
3 Clement Biddle Penrose, born in 1802, died of Yellow Fever in 1839 at “Point Celeste” the sugar plantation of his father-in-law, near New Orleans. He was married to Ann, daughter of Joseph Biddle Wilkinson on June 3, 1830. “History of the Penrose Family of Philadelphia” Josiah Ranville Leach, LL,B., (Drexel Biddle, Publishers, Philadelphia,1903, 89. (Privately printed).
4 Mary Ann (nee Hoffman) is likely Mary’s sister-in-law married to James Wilkinson Penrose.
5 Valaria is Charles B. Penrose’s wife nee Valaria Fullerton Biddle (1799-1881).
6 Ann is Mary’s sister-in-law Ann (nee Wilkinson) widow of Clement B. Penrose who died in 1839.