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At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

Van Valkenburgh, Mary Bethiah (fl.1854) to Franklin Butler Van Valkenburgh

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC06253.04 Author/Creator: Van Valkenburgh, Mary Bethiah (fl.1854) Place Written: Oakley Type: Autograph letter signed Date: 16 July 1854 Pagination: 4 p. ; 25 x 20 cm. Order a Copy

A letter written by Mary Bethiah Van Valkenburgh to her son Franklin Butler Van Valkenburgh. In this letter his mother writes about family affairs including traveling to visit relatives, selling property, and farm work. She also asks that Franklin continue writing to his siblings, and frets about his injured thumb. Page four is a small postscript.

Franklin Butler Van Valkenburgh was born February 21, 1835 in Prattsburgh, Steuben County, New York and died May 9, 1924 in Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. He is the son of Jacob Van Valkenburgh and Mary Bethiah Van Valkenburgh. Franklin Van Valkenburgh had a twin brother, Gerrit Smith, and was one of eleven children. Van Valkenburgh's great grandfather, Jacob Van Valkenburgh immigrated to the United States in 1746 from Holland and settled in Claverback, New York. His grandfather, Bartholomew Jacob, served in Lieutenant Colonel Cornelius Van Duyck's Company in New York's 1st Battalion during the Revolutionary War and was married to Catherine Pruyn. Van Valkenburgh's father, Jacob, was the third oldest of ten children and was drafted into the army during the War of 1812. Van Valkenburgh's mother was a direct decedent of Mathew Gilbert, one of the original colonists in New Haven, Connecticut. Her baptismal name was Polly Bethiah Higgins, but she always wrote her name as Mary. Franklin Butler Van Valkenburgh was a lawyer in Milwaukee who married Emmeline Wells Pratt and had three children.

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