[Archive]: Correspondence to Lenette (Nettie) Wilson

Unbound

by VAN VECHTEN, Mary

Unbound. Fine. Nine Autograph Letters Signed totaling 52 pages to her friend Lenette E. Wilson of Algona, Iowa. The letters addressed to "Nettie" cover a four-year span between 1879-1882. Old folds from mailing, else fine and easily readable. Six of the letters were written from Van Vechten's family home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the other three were written from Mt. Carroll Seminary (later Shimer College) then an all-girls school in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, where Mary was studying and graduated in 1882 with a degree in music. The letters from home deal with her family, her music instruction, her impatience with religious "Divines," speculation on whether (truncated) a local girl is pregnant, and social activities in Cedar Rapids. The letters from Shimer College describe her activities there in some detail and include accounts of her conversations with Mrs. Shimer about Nettie attending the college. One bone of contention arises when Mary suggests that on a recent visit to Cedar Rapids, Nettie paid entirely too much attention to Mary's father: "I know, of course, that you are innocent of anything improper in it, and he too, but your manner toward my father was sometimes the cause of remarks from members of the family, especially my mother, and I myself did not think you always did quite wisely." And "I love my father as I do no one else in the wide world, but I know he has one great weakness... ."

The author of these letters, Mary Van Vechten, was the cousin by adoption of author and photographer Carl Van Vechten (who was born in Cedar Rapids in 1880). She was the Irish-born adopted daughter of Cedar Rapids banker Giles F. Van Vechten, and eventually married Judge Merritt W. Pinckney of Chicago; after Pinckney's death she married a Carmel, California educator Frederic Mason Blanchard.

Amongst the extensive collection of photographs by Carl Van Vechten at the Beinecke Library are at least two images of Mary. The Carl Van Vechten archive at the New York Public Library notes letters to Carl from Mary in their finding aid. A letter from Carl to Noel Sullivan (a close friend and a patron of the arts, who had homes in San Francisco and Carmel) upon Mary's death in 1946 notes that in her will: "I was especially delighted to learn she remembered your musical society and the Negro organizations. The Piney Woods School, to which she was so generous, was practically founded by my father." He also notes about Mary's funereal "...which must have been very beautiful and I shall never forget what a wonderful gesture you made in producing Roland Hayes for the occasion. If he is still with you, please thank him for me."

Nettie Wilson was the daughter of John J. Wilson, an Algona merchant and politician, who later married Edgar B. Butler, a teacher in Algona.

A nice collection of 19th Century correspondence from an Iowa college student who was the cousin of Carl Van Vechten. (Inventory #: 436865)

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[Archive]: Correspondence to Lenette (Nettie) Wilson

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