(TRAVEL) Blackmar Louise E Letters of an American missionary

Sale 2486 - Lot 388

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Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(TRAVEL.) Blackmar, Louise E. Letters of an American missionary in India. 22 Autograph Letters Signed to sister Emily Blackmar of Leavenworth, KS and other siblings, most of them upward of 8 densely written pages; minor wear; many with original envelopes. Vp, 1873-82 and undated

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Louise Estelle "Lou" Blackmar (1841-1928) was a Pennsylvania native who spent much of her life as a Methodist missionary in India. The first letter in this collection was written on 4 February 1873, just a month after her arrival. The letters are written from a variety of cities in the northern central part of India, almost all in the state of Uttar Pradesh bordering Tibet. Most of the letters through 1875 were written from Moradabad, and most of the later letters from Lucknow, the state capital. During the Great Famine of 1876-1878 which killed millions of Indians, she served as superintendent of an American mission in Lucknow and was described as "untiring in her efforts to relieve the panic-stricken and starving population" (see the long profile of her career in Wheeler, First Decade of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, pages 132-8). She describes the problem in her 17 September 1877 letter: "All the spring crops have failed, and unless there be rain within a few days, it will be of no use to put in grain for fall crops. There is no grain, no nothing, no rice, no sugar cane, no work for all these people. . . . It makes the flesh creep to think of it all, what it will be to see the way blocked by wretches dying for want. . . . When one thinks of the density of the population, it seems a hopeless task." She later married a Doctor Gilder, remained in India at least through 1903, and died in 1928.