Archive of the Month: November 2021

Crossed Letter

The Archives and Special Collections has, in its possession, a collection of eighteen letters sent between two Welsh brothers who emigrated to America from Castell Hen, near Bala, between 1943 and 1952. John D. Pugh, who crossed to America from Liverpool in June of 1943 was the first of the brothers to make the move and wrote a number of detailed letters to his brother, Hugh Pugh, his parents, and his wider family and community. Most of his letters are updates to his family on his health and includes detailed descriptions of his experiences travelling through the different cities of the state of Ohio, while living in the cities of Columbus, Cincinnati and Portsmouth.

One of his many letters to his parents, sent from Columbus on the 14th of July, 1845, demonstrates a particular style of letter writing common when paper was hard to come by or too expensive. This crossed letter to his parents creates a grid-like pattern of neat handwriting that runs perpendicular across the page and designed to be read first upright and then again when rotated 90 degrees. This writing – developed to maximise the limited space available on a page, completely covers both sides of a folded A3 sheet of thin paper – creating a dizzying pattern of handwriting that makes eight sides of paper out of four.

Two of the most interesting letters in this collection are again from John D. Pugh, one to his brother and another to his parents. Both are sent from Cincinnati, three years apart, and are written on pages printed with illustrations of the city from across the Cincinnati River, a detailed map, and pictures of infrastructure and architecture. These two letters offer an exciting insight into how the city may have looked during this period, how different artists may have chosen to depict the view of the city from across the river, and how the city itself may have changed across almost two centuries.

The art included in both letters were likely produced with the intention of presenting the city of Cincinnati in the best light, and possibly marketed to customers sending letters to distant relatives as a means of advertising the best qualities of the city to tourists or migrants. The one sent to John’s brother, Hugh, may even have contributed to his decision to follow his brother to America, and the one to his parent may have been chosen to reassure them of their son’s wellbeing in a foreign city.

This “Archive of the Month” was created by Alaw Dafis, Intern

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