After the "genealogical bug" had firmly entrenched itself (see First Genealogical "Find"), my wife and I went to the Dallas Historical Society in Fair Park to look for family history about the Routh Family which we discovered she is a part of. The authors of "Plano, Texas - The Early Years", 1985, Friends of Plano Library, had listed the Dallas Historical Society as the repository of some Routh Family records, so we went to investigate. After looking through the card catalog, the only thing we could find were letters that had been donated to the Society by Clara Routh, the unmarried daughter of Jacob Routh who had come to Texas in 1851. Well, we asked to see the letters and the librarian brought out 4 boxes full of correspondence that had been received by the Routh Family for many years. Where to begin?

I took a couple of the boxes and began to look at the letters - some dating from the 1840's and 1850's! How incredible that these had been preserved. While I was looking at one particular folder, one letter shot to my attention. It was written in a beautiful hand by a young lady named Bethia Ann Howell to her uncle Joseph Routh, dated May 7th, 1846. In the letter, she describes her eye-witness account of the death of Joseph's fraternal twin, Eleanor Routh Mann, eight days previous on April 30th. Oh, how Eleanor would have liked to have seen her twin one more time in mortality, but she knew that she would see him later in the hereafter. What faith Eleanor exhibited! Later in the letter, Bethia Ann mentions that her Uncle Mann is a little better.

By that time, I had an idea of who Joseph and Eleanor Routh were - the latter was my wife's 3rd ggrandmother and Joseph, her twin brother who had come to Texas after his brother Jacob, mother Elizabeth Mashman Routh, sister Elizabeth Jane Routh Thomas, and two more brothers Thomas Jefferson and George Washinton Routh. Joseph (1822-1856) died just a year and a half after marrying Serepta Ellen Campbell, the sister of Loudemia Ann Campbell, his brother Jacob's wife's sister. Joseph was buried next to his mother, who had died four years previous, in the Routh Cemetery.

Needless to say, I knew I was supposed to find that letter. Here, in a letter that had survived 144 years when I found it in late 1990, was a story of faith of a dying woman, my wife's ancestor, and her love for family and the eternal hope she had to encounter them after this mortal life. Every time I read the letter, of which I have a photo copy, tears come to my eyes because I know also that I will have an opportunity to meet this faithful woman at some point in time, and am grateful for these attributes that flowed down to my wife, and now to our children.

I give thanks to the Routh family and the Dallas Historical Society for taking such good care of these letters and the insight into my wife's ancestors that they have given us.

Postlogue: "Uncle Mann", actually Stephen Gillette Mann, my wife's 3rd ggrandfather, died within two months of this letter that I found, leaving a little orphaned daughter born in 1843 named Rachel Elizabeth Mann, named after her two maternal grandmothers. Six years later, at the age of eight, she came to Texas in November, 1851 with her uncle Jacob and grandmother Elizabeth. Ten years later, she became my wife's 2nd ggrandmother after marrying Jacob Clemens Skiles Jr. The story continues.