My three-greats grandmother, Ellie Stoneroad Patterson, seems to have come from a family of some means. She went to a private school in Harrisburg and spent her twenties unmarried–this was in the mid-1800s–and lived with her mother, traveling a bit, including to Iowa to visit her sister. She married John Lyon Patterson in March 1872, at the age of thirty, and moved from Mifflin County to Juniata County, leaving behind her community, her congregation, and the Sunday School class she taught. This letter, written to Ellie from her Lewistown friend E.K. Gibson in March 1872, was evidently sent after Ellie had moved away to join her new husband J.L. Patterson in Pleasant…