By the end of May 1865, Regina Shober Gray’s son Reginald had been staying with his aunts for six months; his visit was meant to help the Shober sisters as they mourned their brother John. Mrs. Gray[1] took her youngest son with her to collect Regie Gray and visit with her sisters:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, 30 May 1865: We came here on Saturday, Morris and I, and are going home next Sat.y. Taking Regie, who is wonderfully grown & improved for his six months’ stay here with the beloved Aunties. I have but once heard him scrape his throat – at home it was incessant – and will be I fear again in our harsher air. This is a real summer day – and I am glad I decided to come on now, instead of three weeks later, as the girls think the warm weather has already pulled Regie down somewhat. I find my sisters looking pretty well – but it is very sad for them in their home without John – they do not get used to the loss, and now that Aunt Regina is gone they feel very desolate.

We are a very isolated family – our mother[2] was an only child – her brothers and sisters[3] having all died young. So there is no connexion on that side and on our father’s we have only the Kimber cousins and some far-away Morris relatives [living in Philadelphia]. Auntie’s house was for years our family centre – the dear old lady was always at home – and always glad to see us; we never could go too often there! It is very sad not to have a call on our minds as part of the day’s plans for some one of us. Mary [Shober] is busy at her house daily trying with Lizzie Clemens help to wind up affairs there. It’s not much of an estate to be sure and Aunty directed in her will where every piece of furniture should go – she had a great horror of having a sale in her house of the old familiar gear she had known & cared for since childhood – and so divided it among the nieces & nephews & a few old friends to all [of] whom it will be valuable as relics of her & a past forever gone.

She left … smaller legacies to various friends and accompanying her will was a beautiful letter of advice and exhortation to her “beloved children.”

Also the silver was so divided with strictest justice. She left $2000 to Lizzie C[lemens] – and smaller legacies to various friends and accompanying her will was a beautiful letter of advice and exhortation to her “beloved children.” The old chairs which belonged to our great grandmother Jones (née Morris)[4] & which must be over 100 years old, we each took one of. The old 8 day clock whose broad solemn face looked down from its portentous height upon our childish sports, comes here,[5] also the grand old chest of drawers with its elaboration of brass ornament about each handle and keyhole – that was given to Mary in her girlhood.

And we each have a strong twilled linen towel, woven in old colony times by our dear old Aunt Sallie Morris, the sweetest, gentlest, kindliest old lady, visits to whose home in Bristol, Pa. are among the dimmest but most charming recollections of my childhood. I can just remember being lifted up to the bedside of her husband old Uncle Isaac Morris[6] to kiss him wh. he lay dying nearly 40 years ago. He was a fierce tyrannical old man, and his wife the meekest of modern Griseldas.

Continued here.

Notes

[1] Hedwiga Regina Shober (1818–1885) was married to Dr. Francis Henry Gray 1844–80. Entry from the Hedwiga Regina Shober Gray diary, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections.

[2] Mary Ann Bedford (1795–1828) married Samuel Lieberkuhn Shober in 1813.

[3] Her siblings included Edward Bedford (b. 1793), James Bedford (b. 1797), and Henry Bedford (b. 1800).

[4] Mary Morris (d. 1800), who married Colonel Blathwaite Jones in 1762.

[5] Presumably to Mary Shober’s house in Philadelphia.

[6] Isaac Morris (1736–1821), who died when Mrs. Gray was 2½ years old. He married Sarah Marriott in 1801.