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My interest was piqued because the typed letter the Archives chose to publish was from an Australian.
As I don't want to breach copyright I won't paste a copy of the letter to this post; it can be seen here: http://blogs.archives.gov/prologue/?p=12997.
I started wondering about Patricia Hall. A quick trip to Ancestry and a check of the Electoral Roll told me that her full name was Patricia Constance Hall, a Secretary living at 128/130 Corrimal Street, Wollongong in 1963. There were no other people with the name Hall registered at the same address. That Patricia was a secretary answers my question as to why she typed her letter of condolence.
A search of the NSW BDM Indexes told me that a marriage between Patricia Constance Comerford and Parnell Hall was registered in Wollongong in 1941. It is highly likely that this is the Patricia who wrote the letter. A visit to the State Records NSW site tells me that they hold divorce papers for Patricia and Parnell who divorced in 1952. A search on Trove returned several articles referring to the divorce case, one of these from November 1953 named three children of the marriage : Stuart Hall 10, Annette Hall 7 and Louise Hall 4.
I hope that one day Stuart, Annette, Louise or their descendants come across this post and are able to view letter that their mother sent to Jackie Kennedy in 1963.
2 comments:
I stumbled by accident upon your article about my Mother last night regarding her letter of condolence to Jackie Kennedy in 1963. i knew she had sent the letter and also that she had received a thank you note in reply. It brought tears to my eyes while reading it; particularly that distinctive signature. She was indeed a beautiful, gentle person. Mum would have been embarrassed if she had known her letter was published as she was a very private person but it was a thrill for me to read it. I will contact Stuart and Louise to let them know.
Yours sincerely,
Anette
So pleased that my blog post reached a family member.
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