“Mail call. Mail call.” Whether it is at sea, in a barracks, or at summer camp, that’s a very welcome announcement. In the days before Mr. Gore invented the internet, people corresponded by mail and that’s how they learned what was going on at home.

Of course, not all mail was welcomed. Letters marked “Third Notice” or that begin, “Dear John” or, for males of my generation, an official letter that began, “Greetings,” did not brighten one’s day. But, in general, people wanted to get mail, especially Charles Edward Brownell, who wrote a letter in 1847 to his mother complaining that he didn’t get any mail from his siblings while he was away at school.

This piece of correspondence was the inspiration for a lesson I taught several years ago at Fitch Middle School, which I have reworked and shared with the American history teachers at Groton Middle School.

At Fitch I provided each student with a copy of the letter and suggested they work with one or two others to transcribe it. This task wasn’t overly challenging since the writer was well-educated and had good handwriting. The letter is written on one sheet of paper and folded with the address on the outside. It was sealed with wax.

The first question I asked the students was to whom the letter was addressed. Charles’ mother’s name was Anstis. I questioned that name, but it is correct. I checked the records in East Haddam.

The Brownells lived in Moodus, a section of East Haddam. When I first taught this lesson I had a large, pull-down wall map of Connecticut that the kids could study. Several years later the decision was made by folks at the central office that wall maps should disappear and teachers should use their computers and Promethean Boards.

I am still grateful to the member of the maintenance staff who was able to salvage a set of U.S. history maps and return them to me.

I next asked from what city the letter was mailed. There is a very clear New Haven postmark on the letter. The fact that Yale is in New Haven was news to some of my students.

The cost to send the letter was 5 cents, indicated by the numeral 5 stamped on the cover.

Although postage stamps were first introduced in the United States in 1847, they were not required to be used until 1856. Also, prepayment was not required until 1855. When it was prepaid, it was not uncommon for the word PAID or the note ‘Pd’ to be marked on the cover. (I remember the practice in the 20th century of a traveler wishing to let the folks at home know that he had arrived safely by placing a collect, person-to-person call to himself.)

The letter was written on Dec. 5, 1847. I provided my students with perpetual calendars so that they could look up the day of the week that a letter was written. I wasn’t surprised to see that Charles had written his letter on a Sunday and mailed it the next day.

Many personal letters in the 19th century were written on Sundays. That’s the day when most people had at least some leisure, even farmers, though cows still need to be milked!

The fact that Sunday was a day of rest could lead to a good discussion of Blue Laws. When I was a youngster, about the only places open on Sunday were Davies, Kretzer’s and maybe the bakery.

A simple question to ask the students is the relationship between the writer and the recipient. This is found in the salutation. “Dear Mother.” This simple question can lead to others. What is a recipient? What is a salutation?

Today’s youngsters are not overly familiar with letters, either formal or informal. In fact, most of us don’t receive very many personal letters in the mail. I had one 7th grade student at Fitch Middle who had never even seen a postage stamp!

I then asked my students what the writer was complaining about in the first several lines of the letter. Most of them realize that Charles wants news from home and his sisters and brother aren’t writing.

“I think it speaks pretty well for the girls that they can’t make out one letter in a term, they ventured to make the attempt last term, and managed very well. I wish that they would try it again this. I should think that among them all they might find enough to fill out one page at least. Mary might write what is going on in the house, or in the factory and perhaps some few incidents that have transpired in the neighborhood.”

I posed the following question to my students: Charles suggests that Mary write about what is going on in the factory. In another letter he commented on cotton prices. With what type of factory might Mary be familiar? How could we find out more?

When I first saw this letter my assumption was that the family might own a mill producing cloth, such as the Slater Mill, with which my students were familiar. Much of the cotton grown in the South found its way to Yankee textile mills. If the price of cotton fell, then the mill owner was able to save money.

An interesting twist to this is that the writer’s father was a Whig, a party that was split North and South over the issue of slavery. And yet, factory owners who may have intellectually opposed slavery were making money based on the labor of slaves who grew the cotton.

When I used this letter in class for the first time, I asked how we could find out more. I wanted to introduce my students to the idea of historical societies and archives. This was long before the days of Google! One youngster said, “Why don’t you go up there and look?”

While I suspect he was being something of a wise guy, he had a good idea. My wife and I drove to Moodus and found the Brownell mill. The old building was no longer in use (which is why all the correspondence had been sold off), having been replaced by a newer brick building.

The new owner greeted us and gave us a tour of the shop. The Brownell mill, like others on the Moodus River, had been producing twine, much of which was used in making fishing nets for use in the Great Lakes. The new mill was still using machinery that would have been familiar to Charles and his father, but they were using synthetics and making twine to be woven into cargo nets for helicopters and bow strings for archers.

In his letter, Charles suggests that his sister Electa might tell how the new airtight stove is working. While tourists at Old Sturbridge Village and Mystic Seaport and other living history museums enjoy seeing people cooking in a fireplace, iron stoves represented a decided improvement over open-hearth cooking. They were far safer and allowed much better control of heat, not to mention that the cook didn’t have to spend so much time bending over.

One of the challenges to transcribing 19th century correspondence involves proper nouns. One line in the letter says, “Rispah may tell what all hands are doing and how much twine they are getting off.”

The names Rispah and Electa are also confusing. Electa is a name from Eastern Star and Rispah is biblical in origin. However, I suspect they were nicknames for his sisters. My research tells me that Charles’ sisters were named Mary, Prudence and Hannah.

At the time the letter was written they would have been 16 years old, 14 and 9, respectively. Charles also mentions Elizabeth. I can find no evidence of a sibling by that name. She may have been a cousin.

The first several times I read this I thought the sentence read “time they are getting off.” One of my students said he thought it said “twine.” As it turned out, he was right.

Charles indicated that he didn’t come home for Thanksgiving, which was a major holiday in New England and went on to say, “I finally concluded that it would be best to wait until vacation, which will now be along very soon, i.e. 4 weeks from Tuesday.”

Given that information, I asked my students if he would be home for Christmas. By checking their calendars, they realized that Charles’ vacation wouldn’t start until Jan. 4. Thus, he would spend Christmas in New Haven.

It always surprises them to find that Christmas was not an important New England holiday in the mid-19th century. In fact, if Dec. 25 was a weekday, the factories would probably be in operation.

The letter is signed C.E. Brownell. The question I posed to my students was how can we be certain C.E. was a male? The answer is in the heading of the letter. C.E. is writing from Yale. That school did not accept women until 1969.

The last question I posed is designed to have youngsters do some reading and critical thinking. Is it possible that C.E. ever rode in an automobile? The answer is that he might have. Charles died in 1906. A little research would show that there were a number of firms producing automobiles in the early 20th century and before. However, if he rode in a car, it would have to be on a dry day as very few roads were paved.

When I taught the second half of the American history course, I used to show the kids the American Girls movie “Samantha.” I had never heard of it until my wife called to me one night to tell me that I should watch this on the television.

The movie deals with the Gilded Age, specifically 1905, and shows the disparity between the rich and poor, from lavish estates to sweatshops. I was impressed with the historical accuracy and bought a copy.

The movie shows a new 1905 Packard. What a beautiful car! Before starting the DVD I’d warn the girls to have extra tissues, and explain to the boys that they were watching it because my wife made me watch it, but to be on the lookout for the Packard.

There were a lot of changes in America between the antebellum years of the 1840s and the new century. We went from new cast iron stoves and water powered mills to railroads, the abolition of slavery and internal combustion engines being used in horseless carriages. And C.E. experienced it all.

Robert F. Welt is a retired Groton Public Schools teacher who lives in Mystic.