Tag: Bucks County

Harriet, Jeff, Aunty, and Anna

“I was not surprised when we received the notice of Aunty’s death. From what you had written to me I was expecting it.”

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A mourning stationery envelope addressed to Anna M. Ramsey. Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection.

To: Miss Anna M. Ramsey
Richborough P.D.
Bucks County
Pennsylvania
C/O Mr. Ed Ramsey
Please forward

High Point
April 27th ‘84

Dear Cousin Anna,

Yours of April 4 received. Was so glad to hear from you. I had looked for a letter for some time from Aunty. But have treasured up my last one from her. Anna, I sympathize deeply with your in your affliction. Your loss is her gain. But it is so hard to part with those we love so dearly but Aunty has only passed from this wicked world to a brighter and better one beyond. But oh the loneliness and sadness in the home without a mother or father. My heart aches for you, well I do remember the bitter pangs of suffering I passed through when I had to give up my dear mother. It seemed as though all the sunshine had gone out of the world. To this day I grieve for her. But time changes all things and we must be reconciled.

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Page one of the black-edged letter written on mourning stationery to Anna Ramsey.

I was not surprised when we received the notice of Aunty’s death. From what you had written to me I was expecting it. But felt very sad indeed. I wanted to come east last fall to see you all once more but Jeff was sick so long and so bad that we could not leave him. I think from what you tell me about Aunty she must have been (in her sickness) very much like cos Kate Hume (McNair). She did not suffer pain but had that distress feeling and sick at her stomach. She had a cancerous tumor.

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A Quaker Legacy

“I lament the loss of honest Richard Hough. Such men must needs be wanted where selfishness and forgetfulness of God’s mercies so much abound.”—William Penn, 1705

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The subject of this black-and-white version of an albumen paper print is my great-great-grandmother, Rebecca Barbara Hough Murdock (25 Nov., 1828-26 Nov., 1917), widow of Thomas McKea Murdock (28 June, 1827-17 April, 1891), seated on a bench outside the Fox family home at 5737 Pierce Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1916. Her daughter, my great-grandmother Rebecca Elizabeth Murdock (29 Sept., 1863-14 April, 1918) married John Thomas Fox (31 March, 1860-11 Jan., 1928). Together they had ten children, the youngest of whom—Helen Kathleen Fox (4 Oct., 1906-28 June, 1983)—can be seen at left. (The fingerprints of my ancestors are also clearly visible.)

Rebecca Hough’s parents were John Thompson Hough (1801-6 Nov., 1869), a cabinet maker in Pittsburgh, and Mary Ann McBride (b. 1804, New Jersey). Rebecca was a direct descendant of the early Quaker Richard Hough (1650-25 March, 1705), a trusted friend and advisor of William Penn. Penn asked Hough to accompany him to Penn’s new land in America to assist in governing the nascent commonwealth.

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Quakers seek religious truth through inner knowing and place emphasis on a direct connection to God.

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