This map shows the distance between Noah's farm (near Adams) to Grand Coulee, a distance of 5.8 km (3.6 miles). And it's 20.5 km (13 miles) from Adams to Regina's Union Station (near red dot).
Dated: Apr 17/11
Addressed to: Miss E. Nelson, Bellhaven, Ont., Dear Ethel (22 yrs old)
Mailed from: Grand Coulee, Sask.
Relationship: Courting
Profession: Farmer
Writing instrument: Fine point pen, Black ink, but looks blue-grey in places
Writing Paper: Thick, textured, linen-like paper, 9 inches x 6.5 inches. Paper is folded in half, with a front and back page, but inside, page 2 is on the right, and page 3 is on the left.
*Ethel - Ethel Maud Rigler - Noah's older sister
*Will - William Rigler, married to Noah's sister, Ethel
*Joe's -The family of Joe Perrault and Eva Amelia - another of Noah's sisters
*Sedore's - Hugh Sedore's family who are related by marriage to Noah via Joe Perrault whose cousins are Sedores through his mother's side
*diptheria
**Sayings "absence makes the heart grow fonder"
*Look under the Categories/Labels in the right column for more posts on this
person.
**see Genealogy Notes below
Grand Coulee, Sask. Apr 17/11 Miss. E. Nelson, Belhaven, Ont. Dear Ethel; -- Well I did not get a letter last week. hope you are not sick. and have not caught the diptheria. I am feeling like a two year old this spring. Well Ethel just called me down as there was a flock of Geese comeing but they did not come near enough to shoot at. I see Will is just come from the Coulee hope he |
has a letter for me will tell you later on. Well Ethel I just finished the hen house today and expect to take my hens down to night. Suppose you are seeding down there now. we have not got started here yet but will start in a couple of days I guess. Was at church twice yesteraday and at Joe's for dinner and tea had a great sermon I can tell you. Well Ethel I wish I were down there for a while to see how. you are getting along |
but they say absence makes the heart grow fonder so you know how well I would like to see you (& squeeze you) Am going to put up my tent tomorrow I guess am getting tired walking over here so much. Say Ethel I wish you were here to get my breakfast these mornings eh Say we have had bad roads here but they are. getting good now. and by next Sunday will be all dry. I guess. How. is Sedores.getting along? & who was sick? |
Well they are calling for tea so bye bye for the present will come back son. Ha. Ha. Well it is now. 8.15. have had tea. carried over 11 hens & 1 rooster. cleaned 4 horses. and. came back at last. They are working at the railroad through hear now. guess it will bedone by fall. Well Ethel like you I can talk better than write. but still you can guess at the things I leave unsaid. but you know. that I love you all the time even. tho I am slow at expressing my. feelings. Well good bye. Little girl. Dont forget. to send those letters. N.C.D. | x x x (in upper right corner) |
Along the left side, Noah has written: Ethel - if every letter was a X it would not be half I am a pig. Half No enough. |
Several sites give reference to Thomas Haynes Bayly who used it at the end of his poem, The Isle of Beauty in 1850:
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!
Another site says Isle of Beauty appeared in Bayly's two-volume Songs, Ballads, and Other
Poems in 1842.
Those same sites say although Bayly popularized the phrase, it was originally found in an anonymous poem within F. Davison's Poetical Rhapsody ca 1602.
According to www.phrases.org.uk, "The contemporary version appears in The Pocket Magazine of Classic and Polite Literature, 1832, in a piece by a Miss Stickland: 'Tis absense, however, that makes the heart grow fonder.'"
Yet some of the above go way back and credit the Roman poet Sextus Propertius as giving us the earliest form of this saying in Elegies: "Always toward absent lovers love's tide stronger flows."
So there you have it, a phrase so popular it has lasted over the centuries. I wonder how Noah heard of it?