Two Iowa women write to a regiment for correspondents (1865)

Letter to the editor1865

OSKALOOSA, IOWA, Jan. 5th, 1865. MR. EDITOR:—Misses Mollie and Nellie present their compliments, and hope this letter will not be considered an intrusion. We, each of us, want a good correspondent—object, Matrimony—and thinking you would be most likely to know who the matrimonial candidates in your regiment are, we concluded to address you, hoping your decision would be favorable.—Get us a good McClellan man—if there are any such in your regiment! You may think we are rather anxious, but we are very sincere, in a wish to open a correspondence with some brave boy in blue; and expect to use—and be treated with—candor. We want to assist the soldiers in enlivening the hours of camp life! We would have it plainly understood that we are Copperheads—good, strong ones, at that! Please answer through the columns of the "Letter," or some other source, and address MISSES MOLLIE AND NELLIE.

Soldier's Letter, January 21, 1865, image 2. View the original page at the Library of Congress

In plain English

Two women from Oskaloosa, Iowa, each want a soldier to write to, with marriage in mind. They ask the editor to find them men who supported McClellan, say plainly that they are Copperheads, and promise to be candid and to expect candor back. Replies can go through the paper.

Who wrote it, and to whom

Newspaper	Soldier's Letter, Kansas City, Missouri
Date	January 21, 1865, image 2 of the scanned issue (no printed page number)
Written by	Two women, Mollie and Nellie
Addressed to	Soldiers in the editor's regiment
Where	Replies through the paper

Context

Copperheads were the wing of the Democratic Party that opposed the Civil War. George McClellan, the party's candidate in the November 1864 election, was not one of them, which makes the women's request for a McClellan man and their Copperhead pride a pointed pairing. Like the 1903 readers' query in this archive, this is not a paid advertisement but a letter printed by the editor, and the editor's reply that followed it is not transcribed here.

In the Personals Dictionary

Object matrimony Correspondent

Tagged

correspondence matrimony written by women letters to the editor

How to cite this ad

“Two Iowa women write to a regiment for correspondents.” Letter to the editor, Soldier's Letter (Kansas City, Missouri), January 21, 1865, image 2. Transcribed in The Personals Archive, AseeksB, https://www.aseeksb.com/archive/1865-soldiers-letter-mollie-and-nellie.html.

Public domain in the United States: published before 1931.

Transcribed from the page image and checked against the original; spelling and punctuation are as printed, and words broken across lines are rejoined. Italics in the original cannot be shown. The editor's reply is not included. Capital letters are also as printed: papers set the first line of each ad in capitals, so the capitals stop wherever that line ended, sometimes in the middle of a word.

← 1862: I waited at Nineteenth till 8 1866: If Miss Sarah Hall, formerly of Richmond →

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