Voices of Cherokee Women by Carolyn Ross Johnston

Author:Carolyn Ross Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Native American
ISBN: 9780895876003
Publisher: Blair
Published: 2013-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

ENDNOTES

1 Ella Coody Robinson, Interview 13833, vol. 77, Muskogee, Okla., May 6, 1938, 94–127, Indian Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.

The following letters between Mary Bryan Stapler Ross (1826–1865) and John Ross (1790–1866) illuminate their lives and relationship during the Civil War. John Ross’s first wife, Elizabeth “Quatie” Brown Henley, a full-blood Cherokee, died on the Trail of Tears in 1839 near Little Rock, Arkansas, from pneumonia after she gave her blanket to a sick child and developed a cold.1 Ross met Mary Stapler, a young Quaker, and her family in Brandywine Springs, Delaware, when he was in the East in 1841. He wrote to Mary in June and July 1844 from Washington City. Although he was fifty-four years old—thirty-six years older than she—he conveyed the nervousness and insecurities of a teenager. In their correspondence during their courtship, John Ross delicately broached the subject of his love for Mary and, in Victorian language, struggled to communicate his feelings. He desperately wanted reassurance that she felt the same for him. After Mary declared her love, they were engaged.

Ross wrote the following to her on August 2, 1844:

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