Elisabeth Petry

Here are some truly remarkable letters from a truly remarkable family, the ancestors of writer Ann Petry. Very few correspondences from African American families of this era (1890s - 1920s) have been found, as it was pre-Plessy v Ferguson, when even substandard education for black children was not mandated. The seven children of Willis Samuel James family and his second wife Anna E. Houston James made their strongest connections to Hampton University, an HCBU in Virginia, where Native Americans were also educated. The patriarch was formerly enslaved and was taught to read and write by his children. He married three women named Anna and had sixteen children. Ann Petry, his great-granddaughter, wrote the excellent novels The Street and The Narrows. The letters in the book deal mainly with illnesses (many family members were afflicted with tuberculosis), college, and, remarkably, sister Helen's years in Hawaii. Although there are photos, there is, most problematically, no family tree illustration in the book.… (meer)