For too long, while I've been writing the trilogy on the Durant family, I've been wondering whatever happened to Ella Durant's letters, family photos, mementos. Her brother William's collections are housed at more than one museum and the Library of Congress. Her father's life is documented in various non-fictional accounts about the building of the transcontinental line. In fact, much of his work is chronicled and digitized at the University of Iowa. I've written about the lack of primary material on Ella in a number of places, including Women Writers and Women's Books, The Adirondack Life Magazine, and my own blog.
What a shock then, when, as I am editing the final draft of the last book in the Durant Family Saga trilogy: The Night is Done, I received an email from a person who holds Ella's scrapbook dated 1854-1920. It was given to them by one of Ella's distant relatives, Howard Rose, before he died in 1984, and saved from being inadvertently thrown out by his second wife. They had it kept it for 30 years and decided to do some research when they stumbled upon my website.
What a shock then, when, as I am editing the final draft of the last book in the Durant Family Saga trilogy: The Night is Done, I received an email from a person who holds Ella's scrapbook dated 1854-1920. It was given to them by one of Ella's distant relatives, Howard Rose, before he died in 1984, and saved from being inadvertently thrown out by his second wife. They had it kept it for 30 years and decided to do some research when they stumbled upon my website.
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