Letters Packet 7 (b): Martha's correspondence to Elias

Amerikan Bord Heyeti (American Board)

Letters from Martha to Elias, 1869-1873, from Constantinople, New York, and Eastern Anatolia. Some of the 1869 letters feature shaky, left-slanting handwriting, a result of Martha’s attempts to write with her non-dominant left hand after sustaining an injury to her right arm. She is clearly frustrated with the pain and with the inconvenience caused by it. For example, on the reverse of a wobbly, left-leaning letter from April is a drastically different, right-leaning text, in which she notes that “I must write in haste this morning and so am going to use my right hand.” At the end of the letter she signs off with, “I must not write with my right hand anymore.” In May she again notes that her right hand and arm are hurting her, and that “I cannot comb my hair, nor sew.” She discusses matters related to the children, logistics of moving house and maintaining the household, news from friends, their own health. Occasionally mission matters are addressed, as in an undated (but among the 1869 correspondence) letter, when Martha writes to Elias: “How shameful – how wicked those people are acting about the Y.K. [Yenikapı] chapel & everything else. I hope before this they are brought to shame and confusion of face – and I do trust a new order of things will grow out of this. It is time there was a sifting.” On May 15 (1869) she writes from New York: “I do not like N.Y. at all as a residence but this must not affect the question of our duty. We could be happy here …[letter cuts off].” On June 29th she writes him from “Steam ship Erin” en route to Constantinople. The next letter is from “on board Russian steamer off Southern Coast of Asia Minor,” June 27 1871. By July 10th she is in Anatolia, in Kershan and Marash. July 24, 1871: “I have quite longed to get on a horse again for a good long mountain ride; and some of those mountains we came over are no joke.” In Nov 1872 Elias is in Rhodes, and Martha reports that missionaries from Bulgaria have come to Constantinople. Nov. 19 1872, from “our own room at home”: “We, in our home here, have reminded each other that this is your birthday – sixty-two today! – and I a few months more. We are really creeping fast towards seventy! For the years roll by very very quickly, and if we had not some such time marks I think we should find it hard to realize how our years do pass away. I love to keep the birth-days. We have passed some sad ones in our times, but we have seen happy ones too, both of our own and our children’s.” Feb 1873: “We are truly comfortable here at home. All our wants are supplied, and when such a wintry storm as this of today comes and the north wind blows it is good to feel that there is plenty of dry wood under cover and a good roof over our heads, and in these days of calamities at sea it is good also to feel that none of our dear ones are tossing on the stormy deep.” May 1868, on board the steamer Aghia Sophia, “off the coast of Africa, near Algiers,” Martha writes her observations of their fellow passengers, an English couple called Nicholson, members of the Society of Friends: “These ‘Friends’ are very zealous people in their way – very benevolent &c, but seem to know very little about the wants & woes of the world outside of England – but what even they lack in knowledge is quite made up by national pride.”

Correspondence between Martha and Elias Riggs, largely related to the minutiae of everyday life and coordinating the travel and schedule of both partners, who are frequently separated. Handwritten in ink, mostly on thin blue correspondence paper.

1868
1873

English

New York, Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey), Smyrna (İzmir, Turkey), Marash (Maraş, Turkey), Kershan, Yeni Kapoo (Yenikapı), Damascus, Cairo, Beirut, Syria (Beirut, Lebanon), Alexandria, Centreville, Batavia, Strawberry Hill, London, on the steamer "Aghia Sophia", Bay of Biscay, Liverpool, Bloomsbury

Missions, Missionaries

SALT Research

https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/43906

Correspondence

Letter

Print, Handwriting

ABARPC007B

Open Access

United Church of Christ (UCC), American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), SALT Research

On deposit at SALT Research from UCC and ARIT