Searching for Susan

"Correspondence Begins"

Lynn, Mass. April 7, 1866Mr. Fletcher,

Your note of April 4th was duly received. Concerning your wish that I would inform you when and where you might meet me I hardly knew what to say to you.

I shall be disengaged from my usual lessons of Wednesday & Saturday afternoons, on Wednesday of next week, and, if agreeable to yourself will meet you at my boarding house, 294 Chestnut St. Lynn, (opposite the school house.)

Thanking you for your friendly interest, I remain,

Respectively,

Susan Smith

It was few days short of the first anniversary of President Lincoln's assassination when the correspondence began, with this response from Susan Smith, a Lynn, Massachusetts school teacher. She seems surprised to receive an invitation from a man she was briefly introduced to the past winter. However, she agrees to meet socially with Edwin Fletcher, a widower who lives in the town of Acton, about twenty-five miles away.

The introduction had come from Rev. James Fletcher, Edwin's brother, seven years his senior. He was a Dartmouth graduate, ordained minister and school teacher. Recently he had started a school near Susan's home.

Edwin Fletcher was thirty-six years old at the time he received this response. Widowed three years earlier, he'd lost both his wife and young daughter within months of each other. Edwin worked in a family shoe manufacturing business.

Susan Smith taught school in Lynn, Mass. While school was in session she boarded in the home of the school principal, Nathaniel Hills. Susan was single, age twenty-eight, and lived the balance of the time in Danversport, Mass., about ten miles north of her school.

The first social meeting of Susan and Edwin, on April 11, 1866 in Lynn, apparently went well, although no correspondence confirms it. On April 20, 1866, Rev. James Fletcher wrote Edwin from Danversport that he'd seen Miss Smith in Lynn two days after, on the thirteenth, and taken tea. However, he wasn't aware Edwin had met with the teacher he'd introduced. Apparently she was discreet enough not to mention it.

On Saturday, the twenty-first, Susan wrote to Edwin. They had met a second time.

Mr. Fletcher,

Another week is ended, the key turned once more in the school-room and I am enjoying a part of this pleasant afternoon in my home in Danvers. It is a pleasure that comes none too often.

After Susan's mother had died in 1861, she moved from her childhood in Ipswich to board with her brother Charles, his wife Elizabeth and their two children.

I was glad to learn from your letter that you were able to reach home with so little inconvenience to yourself. My impressions of the walk from south Acton are by no means unpleasant, even in so early a season of the year.