{"id":56229,"date":"2020-02-14T10:05:23","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T15:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=56229"},"modified":"2023-09-27T11:37:22","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T15:37:22","slug":"my-dear-our-ancestors-love-letter-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/my-dear-our-ancestors-love-letter-secrets.html","title":{"rendered":"My Dear: Our Ancestors\u2019 Love Letter Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction:<\/em><\/strong> In this article, to help celebrate Valentine\u2019s Day, Gena Philibert-Ortega gives some fun examples of secret codes our ancestors used in their love letters. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book \u201cFrom the Family Kitchen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Love letters. Who wouldn\u2019t love to find a few that their ancestor wrote? Reading one would be a great look into that ancestor\u2019s life and a reminder that they were a living, breathing person. But what if the letter included a secret hidden in plain sight?<\/p>\n

\"Illustration:<\/a><\/p>\n

I started thinking about love letters with secret codes when I read about the collection at the North Carolina State Archives from the World War II personal papers of Geraldine Mayo Beveridge:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collection documents the relationship between Geraldine Mayo [later Beveridge] of Mesic, N.C., and U.S. Coast Guard Reserve Chief Boatswain\u2019s Mate David L. Beveridge of Beaufort, N.C., during World War II.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Archives reached out to the public requesting those with Morse code knowledge to help decipher the coded envelopes. You can see images of these envelopes and some that are transcribed on the Archives\u2019 Flickr page<\/a>. The Archives explains that:<\/p>\n

\u201cGeraldine Mayo also learned Morse code, in order to write short love notes and messages on the back of the envelopes of the letters she sent Beveridge, for him to translate into English. Some of these envelopes have the translation written by Beveridge, while others were left untranslated.\u201d*<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are all kinds of ways someone can send a secret message; the following are just a few examples from love letters.<\/p>\n

Postage Stamps<\/strong><\/p>\n

How do you place a postage stamp on an envelope? Well, some people have used that placement to send a message. I\u2019ve heard this story before, and this 1886 newspaper article from West Virginia explains that, depending on how the stamp is placed, you can convey everything from \u201cI love you\u201d to the very opposite. In this newspaper article, the assistant postmaster of Brooklyn confirms that \u201ca large proportion of letters mailed to the various summer resorts, and in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, addressed to Miss So-and-So, have the stamp placed in some peculiar position.\u201d The article provides some examples.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Wheeling Register (Wheeling, West Virginia), 29 August 1886, page 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Do any of your ancestor\u2019s stamped envelopes look different than you would expect? Maybe they were sending a secret code!<\/p>\n

World War II Secret Couple Codes<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was excited to hear the stories of friends who had either received coded love letters or owned the letters of parents and grandparents that used everything from Morse code to ham radio language to letter substitutions to convey loving messages. When I think of secret codes I think of ciphers and symbols, but in some cases the codes were prearranged letter substitutions. Two friends provided me examples from their ancestors\u2019 World War II letters.<\/p>\n

I love this one Courtney LaPointe shared with me. These letters from her great-uncle, stationed in Italy during World War II, to her great-aunt used a code to let her know where he was since he was not allowed to tell her. Courtney explains that:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe letters were heavily censored, the Army cut out sections of the letters even! He would use different middle initials for her and she would spell them out to figure out where he was.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For example, on these four envelopes the middle initial of Genevieve\u2019s name is different each time and spells out F-O-G-G which might have referenced Foggia, Italy.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: envelope of James and Genevieve LaPointe Miller. Middle initial: \u201cF.\u201d Used with permission from Courtney LaPointe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: envelope of James and Genevieve LaPointe Miller. Middle initial: \u201cO.\u201d Used with permission from Courtney LaPointe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: envelope of James and Genevieve LaPointe Miller. Middle initial: first use of \u201cG.\u201d Used with permission from Courtney LaPointe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: envelope of James and Genevieve LaPointe Miller. Middle initial: second use of \u201cG.\u201d Used with permission from Courtney LaPointe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this letter from Deborah Yegerlehner Sweeney\u2019s grandparents, what appears to be a paragraph on page 2 discussing gardening actually is a prearranged code that spells out via the first letter of each word a misspelled \u201cNew Caledonia,\u201d indicating his location to his wife during World War II:<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope you haven\u2019t tried to work too hard on the lawn since I\u2019ve been gone but as we previously planned I think those n<\/strong>ine e<\/strong>vergreens w<\/strong>ould c<\/strong>ertainly a<\/strong>dd l<\/strong>ots a<\/strong>nd d<\/strong>uring O<\/strong>ct. n<\/strong>ew I<\/strong>ris a<\/strong>re due to be set out.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: letter between Roscoe and Gladys Yegerlehner and included in a book edited by their granddaughter Deborah Sweeney, \u201cDear Mother, Love Daddy.\u201d Used with permission from Deborah Yegerlehner Sweeney.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Do You Have a Secret Code?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did you write coded letters to your sweetheart? Did you write letters with code as a teenager hiding your intentions from parents \u2013 or just from the nosy eyes of a sibling? I\u2019d love to hear about them in the comments section below. Happy Valentine\u2019s Day!<\/p>\n

* \u201cGeraldine Mayo WWII Morse Code Messag\u2026,\u201d Flickr (https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/north-carolina-state-archives\/albums\/72157711071734606<\/a>: accessed 12 February 2020).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, to help celebrate Valentine\u2019s Day, Gena Philibert-Ortega gives some fun examples of secret codes our ancestors used in their love letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":56263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12703],"tags":[18861,51093,3253],"class_list":["post-56229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holidays","tag-letters-and-diaries-or-journals","tag-secret-codes","tag-valentines-day-2"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/illustration-0214-2020-featured-graphic-hearts-love.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56229"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94913,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56229\/revisions\/94913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}