May 22,2022 (early draft of opening paragraphs) Dear Grandmother Sarah, I recently wrote a letter to your Grandfather, Henry Taber, my 3rd great grandfather and father of your mother Abby Taber. Very recently I found some interesting information I hadn’t known about our family’s much longer-term connection to Little Compton. You may well have known it and I will get to that soon. But first, the naming conventions of the colonists and early Americans have long fascinated me and your name is a very good place to start, incorporating as it does pieces pointing to the extended family’s past and interconnections.
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Please excuse the informality—I write from the 21st century where life is much less formal. For some years I have had a small photograph of the wonderful oil portrait of you near me and wished so often we could speak. As I explore more about our extended family, I’ve been given an exercise that suggests I write to someone with whom I cannot speak. So, I took up the challenge.
In Agatha! we read the brief comments accompanying her sketches, some illuminating while others often cryptic—offering puzzles to solve. What did she mean?