William Masterson, Pike County

In April of 2019 a reader, Patricia Bastianelli, forwarded me scanned copies of her ancestors' letters. There were two sets of letters, both written to a sister from a brother. William John Masterson was a soldier in Co. A of New York's 133rd Infantry, marching across the United States in service to his country, engaged in terrible battles meant to join the two halves of our country back together. After the war William John would return to New York, his sister and then a wife. With his wife he had two children who lived, William Joseph (1875) and Ida (1870). Unfortunately, Williams John's life was cut short in 1880, and the family fell into disarray.

Willie was sent to the New York Juvenile Asylum, but like so many of the children, he had a living mother and a living and also loving sister. Ida kept all Willie's letters and preserved them.

Willie's first letter is dated November 20, 1885, five years after the date of their father's death. He was living in Pittsfield, Illinois with a man and woman he called mama and papa. "Dear Ida, I am almost ashamed to write to you for not writing sooner. I am getting good helth (sic) you must write and tell me how you are getting along and how mother is getting along I would like to hear from her I would like to hear from Uncle Joe . . . I am goining (sic) to school I have a good time there I have a forth (sic) reader and in the first geography I have my lessons good." He went on to say "I like it a great deal better here than at the Asylum I am the only one mama and papa has and they think lots of me." Willie was very parsimonious with his punctuation and wrote in a sort of stream of consciousness. On the letter he placed a sticker of a soldier (even little Victorian boys and girls liked stickers!) to "gard" the letter on its way to Ida. Willie had grown to weigh 72 pounds and was enjoying raising the pet pig and chicken he had been given.

The next letter's opening is strangely reminiscent of the letters that William senior wrote to his sister during the war: "Dear Sister, I now take this favorable opportunity to write to you to let you know that I am well." Little Willie wrote: "Dear Ida, I now take the pleasure of writing to you I am well and hope that these lines will find you the same." Willie was following the conventions of letter writing, but at the same time maintaining an important contact with his past.

After being in Illinois for over a year, Willie reported on the weather and how it was affecting the crops. Because of poor crops, the family was moving to the town of Pittsfield, and Willie would be required to attend the town school. He preferred the country school. He enclosed with his letter a snip of fabric from materials for the shirts his "mama" was making for him. He enclosed another snip that was from a dress she was making for herself. Willie was quickly assimilating into this family.

In December 1886 Willie reported that school had been cancelled for three weeks because of a scarlet fever epidemic. Three little girls had died in the town. Willie said he would have his picture taken, but it was too cloudy! He hoped for a clearer day the next day so he could send her a picture. Instead he drew a picture for her:

Willie was always sad that he could not send his sister a nice card or a present. He thought that everything was very costly where he lived. His family, though, kept him in clothes, for he always reported about his new clothes. At the end of one of his letters, his foster mother, Mary Stocklaufer wrote a message to Ida, explaining that she had to scold Willie into writing to her. Like all young boys he had trouble sitting down and putting his thoughts on paper! If anything, Mary's grammar and spelling were even worse than Willie's.

Mary and Charles Stocklaufer were a very young couple when Willie came to live with them. Both born in 1858, they would have been just 17 years old in 1885. They had just one child in 1890, Bertha. If what she said in the postscript was true, Ida had Mary to thank for the continued contact and relationship with her young brother.

I will return to Willie's story in another post!