Donnell, Loula Hendon, b. 1860.

Loula Hendon Donnell was the daughter of Margaret Johnston Hendon and John Albert Hendon. She spent most of her life in Chapel Hill, N.C., where she married George Emsley Donnell in 1898.

These letters span over a hundred years and concern three generations of people related to the Donnell family of Guilford and Orange Counties, North Carolina, including the Hendon family of Newbern, Alabama (1858-1861), and members of the Donnell family in Missouri (1838-1841).

The daily letters in the collection are between Jane Donnell (1822-1858), daughter of Major Robert Donnell of Guilford County, and her cousin, Robert Washington Donnell (d. 1893), a Guilford County native who left for Missouri in the 1830s. Robert Washington Donnell's grandfather was Daniel Donnell, brother of Major Robert Donnell (Jane's father). Jane Donnell married a cousin in 1842 and had five children; the youngest was George Emsley Donnell, who married Loula Hendon in 1898.

The letters from Newbern, Alabama, were by John Albert Hendon and W. T. Hendon, planters, and father and grandfather, respectively, of Loula Hendon [Donnell]. Loula's mother was Margaret Johnston Hendon, daughter of Charles Wilson Johnston of Orange County, North Carolina. In 1857, Margaret Johnston married John Albert Hendon and went to live with him in Newbern, Alabama. They had three children, one of whom was Loula Hendon.

In 1874, when her husband died, Margaret Johnston Hendon moved back to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her three daughters. They moved into a house next to that of Cornelia Philips Spencer. When Mrs. Spencer's two daughters went to college, Loula Hendon filled the void and the two became life-long friends.

As noted above, Loula Hendon married George Emsley Donnell in 1898. They spent much of their life on a farm located about five miles out of Chapel Hill towards Durham. Emsley and Loula Donnell had three children: Albert, Mary Louise, and Rachel Jane, the co-donor of these papers, who married J. William Forbes.