My great-grandmother’s brother, Dick Horton, was more mechanical than agricultural and, much to his father’s and brothers’ chagrin, finagled himself out of farm work whenever he could. From the age of eleven in 1888, he began learning watch repair from his uncle, Joe Councill, a traveling tinker.
In the fall of 1900, Dick took this interest to another level, leaving his Vilas home in the Blue Ridge Mountains to attend the Philadelphia College of Horology and Optometry. He graduated a year later as an engraver, diamond and precious stones setter, expert jewelry repairman, finished watchmaker, and licensed Doctor of Optometry. For six years, he worked for a prominent jeweler in Washington, Pennsylvania and subsequently purchased a small jewelry store in what became the town of Farrell, eighty miles north of Pittsburgh.
Dick made return visits to North Carolina and occasionally gifted family members with items from his jewelry store. In 2014, his granddaughter gifted me with some items that had belonged to Uncle Dick, and among these were four letters to him from Amy Krause, a young lady he had become acquainted with during his early days in Pennsylvania.
Although they lived in different towns separated by nearly one-hundred miles, Dick and Amy visited back and forth, courted, and exchanged letters for around a decade, eventually becoming engaged. But Amy subsequently caught wind that Dick had found another love, a woman named Sadie, who was a schoolteacher in Dick’s town. From her home, on a May night in 1913, Amy wrote Dick a final letter, and it was a doozy. Pitiful and poignant, tender yet scathing, it was all one might expect from a jilted and heartbroken lover to the man who “done her wrong.”
“Dick,
“My better judgment keeps saying, ‘Amy, don’t write,’ but this time I will not obey. I canceled a very important engagement this evening in order to write this letter and had planned to begin it very early in the morning, but I’ll tell you where I have been and what I have been doing. I have been in my room and have been reading some of your old letters. There are hundreds of them, so, of course, I didn’t read them all. I think when I counted them a few months ago, there were four-hundred and thirty some. But this evening, I was looking for one letter in particular; sorry to say, I didn’t find it. I wanted to send it to you – you should really see it – but the hour is so late I couldn’t look longer for it.
“I have planned to write you ever since your visit here in February, and you didn’t come to see me. I realized then what it meant and wanted to talk to you. I was actually ashamed of the way I coaxed you to come down that night for fear someone on the ‘line’ would hear and know who was talking, but I did want to have a heart to heart talk with you. There is really no satisfaction in writing a letter at this time, but I simply must have my say. I think of you and how you have treated me all the time. How often you have said to me, ‘Amy, I have wronged you, ruined your life,’ etc., and I always said, ‘No.’ I had all confidence in you and believed you would be as good as your word. There are so many, many questions I wanted to ask you but will not in a letter, for I know you wouldn’t care to write or even dare I guess. I guess you thought it quite strange I didn’t want you to call on the Monday morning, but I really didn’t want you then. There wouldn’t have been time enough for the talk I wanted to have with you, and I didn’t care to have only half of it – better none at all.
“I had heard previous to that time that you were to be married this summer. In fact, I heard it when I was in your city last summer. So, of course, when you were here, I was anxious to hear it from your own lips. You remember your promise that you would tell me if ever such a thing was planned before anyone else had a chance to tell me. But in that promise you failed, as in many others to me. As it is, some people are running to me, so anxious to tell me and pitying me, even saying how badly I look. I really can’t see any change in my appearance. If there is, it isn’t because you are to marry someone else (this is a free country and everyone has a right to his own choice), but because I am so disappointed in someone, who so many years played the part of a true friend and who at last has proven himself otherwise. One woman who talked to you on your visit two weeks ago made it her business to call me on the phone and tell me you were to be married – that you talked of Sadie all the time but never even mentioned my name. Well, Dick, if she is any truer to you than I was, you should surely talk of no one else. She must surely be a perfect woman. She should be your only thought, and I hope you will appreciate her for her worth.
“I can see now so many, many things that, up until a short time ago, when my eyes were opened to the truth, no one could have made me believe. In reading your letters dating from 1904, each one is filled with loving words for me, and those received after our engagement in 1907, well, you know as well as I do what they contain. If I am not too tired when I finish this letter, I may copy a few paragraphs so as to refresh your memory. I wouldn’t send the letters. I shall keep them always, even if I do not believe all they contain. I did when I received them and always would have had you remained true to me. I shall cherish them always for the pleasure I had when I received them. It really grieves me, Dick, to say that I can see now where you were false to me.
“I truly believe you faked the story about your sickness following the mumps in order to get rid of me. You, no doubt, remember you told me at that time you would never be physically able to marry – that you had no love in your heart for any woman and never would have. Just let me copy a line or two from one of your letters: ‘I don’t think I can ever care for you or anyone else again as I have loved you once. I think I have, in a great measure, lost that part of my nature. I have come to look on marriage in fearful horror. If you care to wait on uncertainties, and until time brings the end for which we started for, and if the time comes when I can properly ask a woman to marry me, I shall do all I can, however little or much that may be, to make you happy. You can choose for yourself, and I will be satisfied.’
“Now, what do you think of that for a promise? You know I always said I would wait – wait for time to mend your health, and you see where I am today. I loved you well enough to wait a lifetime if necessary, and you know in all these five years of waiting, I have had many a lonely evening that might have been filled with pleasure had I so desired it, but no, I was willing to wait. You know as well as I do that, in these years of waiting – and before – there were others who would have given me a home and love – you know how many of them and what good, honorable men they were. I couldn’t see it then, but I can now. You were the only one in my eyes and, of course, there were more boys who would have come had you not taken up all my time and thought. I surely wouldn’t have been less popular than other girls. Judging from some of your letters, I was nearly perfect. Surely some others might have found something about me to love. I confess I was partly to blame for turning them away, and I was willing to give you my time – all of it – because I had confidence in your sincerity. I loved no one but you even though I had other friends who called. I treated them merely as friends, but I do believe you have loved Sadie from the very first time you met her, even more than you did me, which, of course, was your affair and perfectly alright had you been fair with me. You surely had enough confidence in me to know that I would be sensible in such a matter, knowing my future happiness was at stake. Don’t you think I would be a happier woman today if, when you first found you loved Sadie, you had come to me as a gentleman with the truth. I could have given you up then, not without sorry [sic], I admit, but then I was younger, and it would been so different.
“You know I always said I didn’t want a man to marry me if he loved someone else – even though our wedding day had come when he met the other one, and I also said I would never sue a man for breach of promise. You know I could take your letters and, at least, make your life very unhappy and, besides, win out in such a case, for they would sure be proof of all I need to say in such a case. I have read many such letters in newspapers, but yours are really filled with things that would win such a case for me. But never fear. I shall never take them to court. I may take a few on a visit sometime soon in order to prove some things I may want to say in order to show what kind of man you are, but I feel that you will suffer tenfold for your sin; such things always come home again. Maybe someday your daughter may be treated as I have been. Then you will know how dear old father feels about this affair. It seems too bad a man as good as he is should be so treated by a man who claims to be a brother. He has said very few words, but you know his few words usually have plenty of meaning.
“I haven’t shed a tear over this affair and hope I may so control my feelings so I may not, but it’s pretty hard work, for you know as well as I do how very dearly I loved you, and now my heart is wounded, and I am sure there will be scar on my heart forever no matter where I may go or how happy I may seem to be. I shall ever think of the one in whom I trusted fully and who so wounded me.
“I do feel badly; I am not ashamed to confess it, and if you should happen to have any of my old letters in which I said I loved you, believe it, for I meant every word of it. If I every marry, and this is indeed doubtful, the man shall know I have only part of my love for him, even if another won you. I can still think of you as I care to, and even though I have said some rude things in this letter and may say more (I don’t know how much longer I may write), you alone know my true feelings. No one can rob me of them. You don’t pity me, I know, but someday you will. I tried to persuade Geo. [a reference to her brother George] not to see you when he was in Farrell, for I knew he was going to Hamilton’s, but he will not get into ‘our affair’ as he calls it. I told him if anyone had treated a sister of mine as you had me, I would certainly stay far away from him, but he didn’t feel as I did. Anyway, he said he seen [sic] you, but you didn’t mention the affair.
“Aunt Rye is feeling badly too; she doesn’t have a very kindly feeling for you, so I’d advise you to stay away from her home when you visit your relatives in Meadville. I expect you to be in Meadville quite soon but don’t care to meet any of the relatives. In fact, I hope my visit may not be spoiled by ever seeing any member of the family. I am planning to go while you are in North Carolina, so there will be no danger of ever seeing you.
“I am really surprised at the number of congratulations I am receiving from so many of your so called good friends and even brothers. I always only heard good of you. I guess folks thought they had to say nice things because we were engaged, but now, such a difference. Of course, no one could say, truthfully, anything against your character, but your disposition; they think I am really better off. I hope you will be more liberal with Sadie, for, Dick, no woman can be happy with a man who is so close with his money. I shall never forget the good (?) dinner you got for me when I stopped over trains with you last August. Would probably never have dreamed of it again, but now such things come to me. I realize how foolish I was to give you all of my time when I was so young, and all through the very best years of my life, but:
“Let it pass in silence; I’ll try to forget.
“There are, doubtless, things to love for even yet,
“And life holds far nobler uses than regret.
“I have already decided what I shall do. I can still be of some use in the world – if not a homemaker, something else as honorable, and I shall do my best. I shall not tell you. You couldn’t be interested anyway.
“I don’t know how to feel toward Sadie. I often wonder if you told her of me – if she knew the circumstances. If she did, she is as guilty as you, for no true woman would rob another of her lover. You told me in December, when I asked you if you intended to marry her, ‘that you guessed you would have to marry her to get rid of her.’ Well, I am indeed glad you didn’t have to marry me to get rid of me.
“Sometimes, Dick, I can’t believe it. It really doesn’t seem possible for you – the one in all the world, who seemed so perfect for me. I am writing this, as you see, on an anniversary you remember six years ago tonight. I am here in the parlor, and I can almost hear your words and remember well how happy I was when you asked me to be your wife and asked me to wait until you could make a home for me. I little thought then of being here now and of writing such a letter to you, but here I am. I am glad for such a good home – such a good father and mother and brothers and a sister, and now a little orphan cousin come to make her home with us. Probably I can brighten her life a little. I guess I was meant to make somebody happy.
“I shall not send your gifts back to you. I feel they are mine, and that you want me to have them. I shall wear the watch and pin as I always have. I don’t care if people do see that I still care for you. I wanted so badly to send my watch to you; recently have been having trouble with it, and it had never been in a jeweler’s – only to you – and I didn’t like to risk it. You know I have always prized it and cared well for it. Anyway, I took it to McNary, and he charged me two dollars, and even then it didn’t do right, and after another week, I took it back again. He said something was broken and charged me another dollar. Well, I didn’t mind the money so much, but even yet it isn’t doing as it should. But I guess I shall have to be content with it as is; it can go through life crippled like its keeper.
“Now, I sure must close. Oh, I should like to write this whole tablet and send it to you in the covers, and I could do it too. There would be so much to say, if I dared, and if you cared, but your thoughts are not for me. You wouldn’t enjoy a big, long letter, even it were all sunshine. I have only one more favor to ask of you, and then you and I are done. I hope for old times sake, you will grant it. Please do not send me any announcement or card of any kind concerning your wedding. Have enough pity for me to realize I couldn’t bear to get it. Surely you realize how I feel. Even though you have wronged me, there’s a feeling I cannot get rid of. In fact, I don’t care to. I shall always have it, I hope.
“When you go home on your trip – as I hear you are planning – remember me kindly to your mother. Tell her I had hoped and planned to see her sometime, but fate has so planned my life that we will probably never see each other on this earth, but I shall pray for the better land where I am sure she will be, and there I shall know her.
“And now, Dick, I will say goodbye, and may God forgive you and bring you much happiness in your new home. I shall pray for you each night as I have for six years. Every night since our engagement, your name has been mentioned in my prayer with the family. I shall keep it there, for that is where it belongs, and my prayer will always be for your happiness, and that He may so lead me that we may never see each other again.
“I must sign this as I began it, just plain ‘Amy,’ for I couldn’t say dear or even dear friend to you now. Sadie wouldn’t allow it. We must be just plain Dick and Amy. With my very best wishes for you and yours. Love ‘Amy.’
“P. S. Please excuse this scribble. I am quite tired and nervous from working today – housecleaning time, you know.”
A little more than a month after this letter was penned, Dick and Sadie married, and they remained so for six months shy of fifty years until Dick’s passing in 1962. Despite the devastating repercussions of the mumps that Dick had alleged to Amy, he and Sadie had three children.
As for the forlorn Amy, contrary to her expressed doubts, she did marry. In 1916, at the age of thirty-one, she wed a businessman, and she became a homemaker and the mother of two children. She spent the remainder of her days – hopefully happy ones – in her hometown of Washington, Pennsylvania, dying in 1957.
One wonders if Dick and Amy ever crossed paths again, or if Amy continued to hold a place in her heart for Dick as her letter professed she would. Today, the two lie buried in separate cemeteries in separate towns, still separated by the same distance that this 1913 letter (which Dick saved for the remainder of his life) traveled from one’s hand to the other’s.