ENpage_0001
Facsimile
Transcription
Robert Kennicott Esq.
Sir.
Pardon the liberty
I, a stranger, take in addressing you.
and lay the blame upon our mutual
friend Dr. Kirtland. I wish to procure
a copy of "Melskeimers Catalogue of
Coleopterous Insects of the United States"
and he tells me through you I can do
so. Will you thus aid one whom the
Doctor honors with the name of friend
and who, though ignorant and unskilled,
loves the pursuits to which he has
devoted a life time?
If you have leisure and
inclination my friends as well as myself
would like to see you at the Corner of
Pine and Huron Streets, the residence of
J. B. Doggett. Yours. with apologies
Kate E. Newell.
Notes and Questions
Please sign in to write a note for this page
The name in line 9 is "Melsheimer" [not Melskeimer]. The book being requested by Miss Newell is the "Catalogue of the Described Coleoptera of the United States" - an 1853 Smithsonian publication authored by Friedrich Ernst Melsheimer (also Samuel Haldeman and John Lawrence LeConte). Another letter was written by her on November 3, 1857(?), thanking him for the book (see RK-391). She married William Doggett soon after and would become the first woman elected to the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and also went on to become active in Woman’s Rights issues in Chicago.