During the summer of 2013 an Archives Student Assistant processed a donation of letters. Over 900 handwritten letters between IWU alumna Florence Ralph (’30) and Marion T. Bird are contained in this collection. The letters cover a wide range of topics from faith to politics, school activities, local events, family and more — all the details young people might share during a long courtship in a tumultuous time in American history.

The donation of the handwritten documents came from the descendents of Florence and Marion and also included scanned pdfs of all the letters that family member P. L. Embley created. Researchers are welcome to use the letters in the archives or in the online collection we created with the scanned images. Mrs. Embley also selected and scanned photographs from the family albums held by the children and grandchildren of Florence and Marion Bird.

We appreciate the efforts the family has gone through to make these documents available to researchers everywhere. The letters in this collection have not been transcribed at this time. Readers are welcome to contribute transcriptions they create or additional subject headings they identify to archives@iwu.edu.