Nov 21, 2024 - Sale 2687

Sale 2687 - Lot 241

Price Realized: $ 1,062
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(WEST--MONTANA.) Mrs. James Flanagan. Letter describing life as housemaid for Montana's wealthy but crude ex-governor Samuel Hauser. Autograph Letter Signed to Mrs. Talcott. 8 pages, 8 x 4¾ inches, on 2 folding sheets; folds, minor wear and soiling. Helena, MT, 22 November 1891
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Additional Details

This letter is written by a housemaid for former Montana governor Samuel Hauser (1833-1914), a wealthy industrialist. The author had recently arrived in Helena from the East Coast to take the position, and is apparently writing to her former employer.

She describes the train ride west: "When we reached Dakota, we were very interested in sight-seeing, looking at Indian camps and cowboys," adding that "I am at present employed by one of Montana's millionaires who is also an ex-Governor." Describing her new employers: "They are the very best of the rough. We have a very fine house here, and they will come in and spit all over carpets and everything else. . . . I may take more notice of it than another, as I am the housemaid. I do all the housework, wait on table, make beds. . . . I have not seen or known any family in Hartford or elsewhere to live as they do here. Why, every meal is equal to a good dinner: vegetable, meat of the most expensive joints all the time, fowl, everything you can speak of in their season. They are the greatest eaters I have ever met or heard of, and lazy is no name for them. Why, the Mrs. won't put on her rubbers or button her shoes without assistance, and her daughter of course is just the same. . . . We have a Chinaman cook who gets fifty dollars a month, just the same I get. . . . When the Governor has a card party (by the way we are great gamblers here) he always gives five dollars extra and once he gave me ten just for giving them whiskey and a little luncheon, which they partake of freely. The Chinaman and I order everything that's needed for the kitchen and table. . . . The cooks here are mostly Chinamen, and some of them are remarkably fine cooks too."

The author describes herself as a housemaid and mentions "myself and my little family," offering "James Flanagan, 720 Madison Ave., Helena, Montana, Care of Gov. Hauser" as an address. James may have been the author's husband, possibly also employed by Hauser as a coachman.

The recipient was Sarah Elizabeth Allen Talcott (1839-1904) of Hartford, CT, whose notable artist son Allen later married into the Agnew family (see lot 130), and is mentioned in the letter: "Mr. Allen, I suppose is a professor in art now, remember me to him, and tell him I enjoy his pipe still."