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Oatlands

Historic House and Gardens

Morton

“I may have exagerated a little about the snakes”

Eastern Rat Snake
Eastern Rat Snake

Part of the joy in reading the family letters within the Eustis Archive at Oatlands is getting a feel for who these people were and how they lived their lives.

Morton is not merely a face in a photo album; he is a melodramatic teenager, excited to share his school adventures in North Carolina with his sister in April, 1918.

(No snakes were harmed in the making of this blog.)

Dear Margey. April 25, 1918.

            Thank you so much for your very nice long letter which I recieved this morning. Today I did something which I have never done before. I killed a snake. It was a deadly poisnesous one. about 1 ½ ft long. I had a shovel with me when I saw him and ⌃a coloured man who was near stuck it down on its tail and it rose right up and struck at the shovel. It also swelled up big. Then I killed it by sticking the shovel on his neck, by the way a master killed a snake 4 feet long and another boy killed one just like mine. Whenever you go out in a motor you see about 5 snakes on the road. Today a boy ran over one on a bicycle. the country is lilteraly full of snakes. It is not safe to sit down in the woods or go in any swamp. They have about a every kind of poisenous snake down here (here are some of them)

Rattlesnakes, coperheads, mocasins, adders, bullsnakes, pinesnakes, ⌃vipers and about 1,000 other kinds. I for one dont like it very much. (by the way all the snakes that I have mentioned are very poisenous, also it was a adder that I killed. Please write and tell Helen and Mother this.

Goodbye dear Margey Lots of love from Morton P.S. Louis and Win are enchanted cause there are so many snakes here. P.S. I exagerated alittle about the snakes Dear Margey, This is a letter that I wrote a week ago and forgot to mail Very best love (Will write long letter tomorrow) Morton

The snake above is one of the friends to the Oatlands garden, found at his home in what was formerly a carbide plant at the foot of the garden. Not one of the “deadly poisonous” snakes described by young Morton, but a nonvenomous Eastern rat snake.

*Historical transcriptions are precise- grammatical errors, mistakes, misspellings, and all.

*Cousins to the Eustis children, Louis and Winthrop Rutherfurd belonged to Winthrop Chanler Rutherfurd and Alice Morton, Morton’s aunt through his mother.

From Ephemera to Eternity

Morton Corcoran Eustis, the third child and only son of William and Edith Eustis, attended a boarding school in Cornwall, Connecticut during the influenza pandemic in 1918. In October of that year, he sent the following letter to older sister Margaret:

Dear Margey

Thank you so much for your nice long letter which I received almost 4 days ago. I know that I should have answered it before but I have been in Bed for a week I got up two days ago and went to Bed again yesterday. There are about 15 boys sick in the Infirmary and as there was no more room there I am over in a single room. Yesterday they closed the School for a few days as there were so many sick boys. It was just my luck to have to go to Bed again during a Holaday. I didn’t no till today that I have had “Spanish Influensa” only I had a very mild case so they say. I started it going in the School. Two masters are sick also with Influenza They think. Also the Boys have it over at the Infirmary and one boy is very dangerously ill and has a special trained nurse with him. Today they think he has Pneumonia. They take the Tempetures of all the Boys every afternoon now, and as I had 99.3 I had to go to bed. It was precaution so that I wont get a cold and get Pneumonia which I would very likely get if I got even a slight cold but Im alright so don’t worry and tell Mother not to Maybe they will have to close the School intirely Hope Helen is better Best love Morton Am in bed now.

P.S. Hope no Influenza at Foxcroft

Thirteen-year-old Morton survived his flu, as did his four sisters. The letters between them mention concern over wearing masks, being isolated from their friends, and fears over schools closing.

*Historical transcriptions are precise- grammatical errors, mistakes, misspellings, and all.