TNGenWeb Project/TNGenNet, Inc., (a Tennessee nonprofit public benefit corporation). "The Howard-Smith Collection" Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved. The originals are at the McClung Library in Knoxville. This file is in text format. Please use your browser's "back" button to return to the previous page. ******************************************************************************** To: Lida Howard-Smith From: John B. Brownlow, Post Office Department, Washington, D. C. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post Office Dep't. Washington D.C. June 23d /95 Dear Lide: It is Sunday but I have gone into the P.O.Dep't., returning home from going to City Post Office for my mail, so I can write a few letters undisturbed by visitors. I received your registered letters two days ago for which accept thanks. Will return them all after Mr. Owens has had time to read & copy certain portions. I supposed you received the oration on President Lincoln before Congress in which Judge Pendleton is mentioned in such eulogistic terms which I sent you but in your last letter you failed to mention that you had received it. I return the Commission signed by Gov. Blount and with this suggestion, viz., that when you have a valuable document or paper of any kind to mend instead of using ordinary paper to patch it that you get tracing linen which enables you to clearly see through it when laid over the writing. There is a tracing paper. Do not get that but the tracing linen. It pretends to have musilage on one side but the mucilage is not thick enough and I always put mucilage on it. Photographer's paste is better than mucilage. I send you a sample of this tracing linen but there is a thinner quality which I could not get here. The thinner it is the better. I get a bolt of this tracing linen 1 yard wide & several in length for $1 & it is enough to last for years & to mend an hundred of letters. I also use it to mend the torn pages of my books. Several years ago a book was published at Baltimore called, I think, "History of a Southern Planter." It was highly eulogized, when published, by the book reviewers of the Atlantic monthly and others of our best publications. It was the best account I ever saw of the best class of slave-owners as the Gaines, Pendletons, Taylors, your father & others of like class. If all slave-owners had been of the class described in that book there would have been no harm from slavery, but unfortunately under the system of slavery, any brute might have absolute control over the slave who could get the money to buy one. But while the book is interesting , as the best description yet given of the humane & cultured slave owner its chief interest to you will be its family history. It was written by your cousin Susan Dabney Smedes. One of your lineal ancestresses was named Dabney. For many generations the family has been distinguished in the social and intellectual life of Va. And the Southwest. Several of the name have been Professors in the University of Va. Several of them have written books, been Doctors of Divinity, one is now President of a College in Texas & a D.D. One is President of the University of Tenn. The family originated in France where for centuries they had been of the nobility. They were of the Huguenots who were compelled to leave France, after the Saint Bartholomew massacre, for their Protestant religion. The name before coming to America was d'Aubigney The aristocratic prefix was dropped by the members of the family on coming to free America & settling in Va. And D'Aubigney was Americanized into Dabney. But see the book. Any book merchant can get you the book on your calling for a "History of a Southern Planter, by Mrs. Susan Dabney Smedes." I had it; loaned it to my mother and she gave it away as she gives everything away she has. But she was greatly interested in reading it and in the elaborate history of your Dabney or d'Aubigney ancestors she recognized much that she had heard her mother (whose christian name was Susan Dabney) tell her. Other books which tell of your kinsfolk are the "Va. Historical Society Papers" published in several volumes. In fact if you had all the books which tell of your kinsfolk, they would fill a small book-case & cost at least $150. When will you go to East Tenn? I am going to Knoxville about the middle of Sept to stay 3 weeks. Yours truly, John. B. B.