Contact 02 - Letter from Dorothy Wright to Catherine Elliott - 11 August 1743 - Transcription and Commentary
Sheffield Archives LD1567/1
Sheffield Archives LD1567/1.
TRANSCRIPTION
Sheffield Park August 11th, 1743
Dear Daughter
I have the good news to hear you're well and is all I should be glad if you would write offner for I am very dull at present but time wears off all things so hope in time it will do the same by me. But it will never stray my thoughts from my children. I am a little unhappy in having you settled so far off from my opportunities of seeing you will be less. I've sent your gown and wish it may please and will send the rolling pin and battledore by our wagon if possible. Your sister wants her gown but cannot make it her without a measure. Please to let me know how her affairs goes on for I can hear nothing from no quarter, this is all. But my blessing to you and your sister & love and respect to all who are Down from your ever affectionate Mother
D Wright
P.S. You cannot think how much it would oblige me in writing often if your sister wants any small matter of money let her have it till your father comes. Your grandmother[1] gives her love to you and gives you thanks for your kind present. Your brother Jervas is very still and writes little in short I'm quite lost. But your spouse has promised me when your sister comes down you shall come with her.
Adieu Dear Kittey
COMMENTARY
Letter[1] dated : 11th August 1743
To : Catherine Elliott
From : Dorothy Wright, Sheffield Park
This is the second letter in the series. Like the previous letter it was from Dorothy Wright[i] to her daughter Catherine “Kitty”[ii]. The daughter had married George Elliot[iii], of Stony Strafford, some seven months earlier and she and her husband were now living in Stony Stratford. George Elliot is variously described as a carman and as a factor. Much to Dorothy’s delight they return to live in Sheffield some years later after the date of this letter and lived in Norfolk Street in the centre of the town, not far from what is now Sheffield Cathedral.
Dorothy was obviously missing her adult children and feeling neglected by them. Her daughter Rebecca[iv], it seems, was away from home – the letter suggests that she was visiting her sister in Stony Stratford. In Dorothy’s opinion, neither sister wrote home frequently enough.
Like most woman at that time Dorothy must have been a proficient dressmaker. She sent a dress to Catherine “Kitty” seemingly without checking that it fitted. So, for Rebecca, she was not prepared to start without measurements.
Dorothy included in this letter, that her eldest son, Jervas Wright[v] as not being a good communicator or letter writer. We do not know where Jervas was at this date. Later, he is known as a surgeon, so perhaps he was apprenticed to a barber surgeon to learn the trade. His will[vi] probated in Chester in 1796 is lengthy and hugely useful to the family tree, as it contains the names of many of his siblings and their children together with their relationship to the testator.
In this letter Dorothy just mentions her three eldest children, not her other six, all of whom were still of an age to be either at school or at home in Sheffield with her. A further three children had died before the date of this letter.
The battledore she is to send Catherine “Kitty” was either a wooden paddle instrument used for beating and stirring in the washing of clothes or a game played with a shuttlecock and rackets, a forerunner of badminton. In the context of this letter it was probably the former and not the latter.
The letter implies that Dorothy had recently met Catherine “Kitty’s husband in Sheffield, as she states that he had agreed that she should travel to Sheffield with Rebecca when she returned there. As a carman or factor, no doubt George Elliott travelled between Stony & Stratford and Sheffield as he had business interests in both towns.
The children of Thomas & Dorothy Wright
- Jervas Wright, 1720-1796
- Catherine Wright, 1722-1805
- Rebecca Wright, 1723/24-1778
- Joshua Wright, 1725-1766
- Dorothy Wright, 1726?-1735
- Elizabeth Wright, 1726/27-1728/29
- John Wright, 1729-1794
- Thomas Wright, 1731/32-1803
- Charles Wright, 1732-1815
- Alexander Wright, 1835-?
- Dorothy Wright, 1737-1836
- Jane Wright, 1739-1741
Notes & Bibliography
[1] Letters of Hare and Elliott families of Sheffield – Sheffield Archives LD1576/1 – “Letters of Mrs. Dorothy Wright to her daughter Mrs. Elliott”
[2] Dorothy Wright – born Jervas – bap.1696-1770
[3] Catherine Elliott – born Wright – bap.1722-1805
[4] George Elliott
[5] Rebecca Cooper – born Wright – bap.1723/24-1778
[6] Jervas Wright – bap.1720-1796
[7] Will of Jervas Wright late of Sheffield and now of Crannage Surgeon. Available on www.findmypast.co.uk