Letters From the Box

T.T.L.V. and # # # Taylor writes T.T.L.V. and leaves several kisses at the  bottom of his letter to Fanny in August 1889. Maybe you noticed on that last blog introducing Taylor and Fanny, the "T.T.L.V." written at the bottom of Taylor's photograph.  Nobody really knew what that stood for.  We could figure out the "T.H." (Taylor Holt" and the "F.H.K." (Fanny Huckstep Kyle), but who or what was T.T.L.V.?   I know I've already said that these were mush love letters, but, really...you have no idea. They are REALLY MUSHY LOVE LETTERS.  Some are a single page, front and back, with nothing but mushy love.  It's sweet.  And a little ooky.  This is the Victorian era, after all - a time of "Mother Hubbard Dresses" - high necks, shapeless bags, basically - and the necessity of having a chaperone.  Taylor and Fanny met at a church social.  They were in Leadville, Colorado, which - at the time - had a lot of saloons, a fancy theater, and coul...

My second-great grandparents seem like an unlikely couple: he's a Yankee from Illinois, but with roots back to New England and the Mayflower; she's a quintessential Southern girl, born during Reconstruction in rural southwestern Virginia.   Taylor Holt, ca. 1888 T.H. = Taylor Holt F.H.K. = Frances Huckstep Kyle T.T.L.V. = you'll have to wait and see Taylor Holt was born in Kankakee, Illinois, on February 13, 1868. He was the only child of Stephen Philip and Aurelia "Lelila" Morgan Grimes  Holt.  Stephen died before Taylor's first birthday, so Lelia took Taylor back to her hometown of Princeton, Illinois to live with her mother and sisters in their little house on the southeast corner of the Main Square.  After Taylor graduated from Princeton High School, he lived for a little while in Chicago, where he apprenticed himself with a metal worker.  Though I haven't found the name of his employer there, he wrote in a letter to his family in October 1886, ...