William Edwards folded letter

December 7, 1848

The letter is addressed to Dr. David Shelton Edwards in Virginia. The museum’s collection holds forty-seven letters written by US Navy Surgeon Edwards. There is a direct connection between information in a letter he had written to his wife Harriet in New York dated November 28-29, 1848 (1978.0652.42) and this letter written by Edwards’ adult son, William, on December 5, 1848. In this folded letter, William Stout Edwards references the flu that his father had described in the November correspondence. The letters’ dates demonstrate how swiftly communication moved between the Edwards’ family members along the Eastern seaboard in 1848.