Scope and Content Note
The papers of the Ham, Connelly, Parks, and Snodgrass families span the years 1870-2018, with the bulk of the material dating from 1888 to 1953. The collection documents life for everyday Americans in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Materials include love letters from Walter T. Connelly to Ella Ham from 1888 to 1890; Connelly was a traveling agent for agricultural implement companies and his line of work is described in a number of the letters. Other notable correspondence in the collection includes letters written by Ella Ham Connelly to various family members from 1929 to 1949, and a letter from David Nathan Snodgrass to his daughter, Maggie Snodgrass, addressed from the Memphis Keeley Institute (Memphis, Tenn.), an early twentieth century addiction treatment facility. Also included are publications produced by the Parks family (descendants of the Connelly family), which provide transcripts of the correspondence and additional historical context and biographical information about the subjects and individuals mentioned in the letters.