Letters Received by Elizabeth Carpenter (Thomas), 1887-1906

The collection includes ca. 100 letters received and bills relating to Carpenter's business (1875‑93). The Adams Jewett Company of Cleveland is the chief correspondent.  There are about 50 letters received by the Carpenter family (1887‑1871) including thirty from E.L. Hatcher, a beau of Miss Elizabeth Carpenter. Ten items related to Tirza Benton Vaill (1856‑1871) before her marriage to Henry Carpenter. Note that few of the letters in this collection were actually written by Carpenters.

Edward L. Hatcher, an Oberlin College preparatory student in 1894‑95, was suspended in the fall of 1895 for smoking. He studied at Western Reserve before going into a law office in his hometown of Tiffin, Ohio, in 1896. He and Elizabeth Carpenter were prep students at the same time. Fond of boxing, tennis, cycling, and football, his letters show he disliked compulsory church attendance at Oberlin and enjoyed hearing atheist Robert Ingersoll attack "What we have always been taught to hold most sacred" in a lecture in Cleveland.  Hatcher felt Oberlin would be a better place if it were not so "puritanical." (19 Nov. 1895) His smoking habit, or love for the "weed" as he called it, constitutes a central theme in these letters of 1895‑96. His habit got him suspended from Oberlin, his father disapproved of it, Miss Carpenter sermonized against it, and general opinion suggested it was harmful to his health but he chose to ignore this advice.

Seventy items, mostly letters (1842‑1933) have no visible connection to the Carpenter family or business. These include deeds and papers of Peter Beam of Oberlin (d. March 1906) relating to lot #92 in Russia Township, Lorain County, 1878‑79; family letters of the Smith family of Parkman, Ohio (1848‑1907); business papers (1874‑98) of E.D. Newkirk, builder of hay scales; family letters of Wendell Graham, 1935 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, received in 1932‑33; letters received and receipts of Alexander King, 1870‑72; papers of the Griffith family (4 items) including an inventory of the estate of Eleanor Griffith in 1864; letters and poems (1842‑1905) and one issue, of Our Experiment 1 November 1875, published in Oberlin (mutilated).

Box list or inventory available in the Carpenter case file (30/104).

Note: The above entry was taken from William E. Bigglestone's unpublished "[preliminary] Guide to the Oberlin College Archives," which was prepared as individual entry sheets in a three-ring binder during the early 1980s.

The Vaill Family papers folder contain letters, 1837-82 and undated, which involve the Vaill family including Tirzah, who married Henry G. Carpenter. Four of them were written in Oberlin by Henry to Tirzah in 1871 before they were married. It would appear that the Vaill family was located in Henry County, Illinois, from the 1840s.  Tirzah's father, a minister, was named William F. Vaill.

In a later accession [1999/095], the Archives received three more letters. Two of these were sent to Henry Carpenter from S. Wood and Sons in 1873, a construction contractor, regarding the payment of an account. The remaining letter was sent by Henry Carpenter to George Moore, encouraging the 16 year-old boy to continue his studies.