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RE: American Civil War Letters - June 16, 1864 - Resentments, a Missed Funeral, and a Cure for Diarrhea
I like the way that people used to pass knowledge through nursery rhymes, like "Money makes the mare go". It reminds me that I once read that the poem, Jack and Jill, was an underground tax protest against a whisky tax by King Charles I.
Also, in these letters, the apparent rivalry between your great-great-great grandmother's church and the Universalist church is an interesting ongoing theme. If that's the same Universalist church as today, it surprises me that they've been around so long. I don't know much about them, but I had thought that their history began in the 20th century.
A whiskey tax? Fie on King Charles!
According to Wikipedia, the first American Universalist church was founded in Gloucester, MA, in 1774!
Donna and I went to a couple different Universalist meeting houses when we first met 20+ years ago. (Faith shopping, I guess.) We could never pin down what the beliefs were. One service was like a cantankerous town meeting with no talk of faith or God at all. The other was more of a new-age-hippy sort of prayer meeting.
But we were told each church pretty much did their own thing and that was kind-of the point. So I can see how Marcia would resent the appeal of such an organization.
Don't know if you'll see this reply or not, but I just had your post come across my feed, through here. In case you do happen to see it, I just wanted to mention that all these years later, this series still ranks among my personal favorite articles on the Steem chain.