Old Vault Letters, Elaine Patton, 10/1/12

Today I reviewed Michelle's letters from last week, MSS113-b01f01-08 and MSS113-b01f01-09, and two OCR'd provenance letters, MSS113-b01f23-01 and MSS113-b01f23-03.

That b01f01-09...wow. Lots of fun words there.

There was a mystery word used twice that I'd hoped might have been "dress," but a sentence or two later there was a word that was definitely "likeness" and the shapes of the last 2 letters didn't match. The penultimate letter is close enough, but the final letter in the first word isn't anything like the s of "likeness."

I belated figured out one of the nearby words is "military" which explains the "citizen [mumblemumble]" distinction further on.

Apparently Houston just doesn't have consistent Ts in general, because the final letter here fits his usual "th" form, but it's shaped the same at the final T in the next word, which was definitely "but."

doubt

Sort of makes me want to make little charts showing his evolution of writing over the years. If nothing else, maybe I could get a fix on his Ts and ths finally... not because they're hard to decipher (usually) but just to know, haha.