Helen (Nelly) Stevens papers, 1821-1984.

ArchivalResource

Stevens, Nelly, 1828-1860. Helen (Nelly) Stevens papers, 1821-1984.

Helen (Nelly) Stevens papers, 1821-1984.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/727142599

The collection consists of the letters of Helen "Nelly" Stevens and her family of Whitehall, New York, and Dorset, Vermont, from the 1840s to 1870s. An inveterate letter writer educated in Vermont, Nelly Stevens, traveled to Mississippi in 1855 to teach school and then moved to Texas. In 1940, her great-great niece, Elizabeth Coolidge, wrote a fictionalized account of Nelly Stevens' life based on the letters as part of a university english course, which she later tried unsuccessfully to publish. This unpublished manuscript as well as transcriptions by Virginia of many of the letters are included in this collection. The focus of the collection is on the life of Nelly Stevens as told through the letters in the collection. Nelly, often separated from her family even as a young girl when she visited family in Albany, N.Y., wrote and received frequent letters to and from her family. Other materials in the collection include genealogical information and photographs. Nelly Stevens' letters document her time in Vermont, Mississippi, and Texas. After studying at Castleton (Vt.) Seminary in 1848, Nelly Stevens attended the Burlington (Vt.) Female Seminary in 1851 and 1852. Because she found it difficult to find a teaching position in Vermont, she accepted a position as governess at a Beech Grove, Mississippi, plantation (near Vicksburg). In her letters from 1855, she detailed the journey south by rail and river boat. Although she enjoyed the material comfort of the plantation, she wrote to her mother on June 10, 1855, that after witnessing the whipping of a runaway, that slavery was a "curse." In the spring of 1856, Nelly, newly married to John Casselman, left Beech Grove for LaGrange, Texas, where they opened a school. Nelly Stevens' mother, Mary C. Stevens visited the Casselmans in 1859 and her letters to her daughter Frances "Fanny" Howland document Nelly's death in 1860, after which Mary C. Stevens returned to the North with Nelly Stevens' two children, Edward and Frank. The collection also includes letters of both Mary and Fanny Stevens and John R. Casselman as well as Augustus Watson's letters to Nelly Stevens. These are the only significant non-family correspondence in the collection and describe Watson's journey from Whitehall, N.Y. to Sacremento, California, in 1849, in search of gold.

1 linear foot.

Vermont Historical Society