SEARCH FOR AN AUTHOR

 
    Fifteen years ago when my mother, Mary Lesley (Ames) Wolff, pulled cartons of old papers out of her Ames grandparents’ attic in Saint Paul, Minnesota, she had little idea of what lay ahead.  She and some colleagues set to work sorting and structuring what we call the Ames Family Historical Collection. But inevitably they had to stop, to read, to thrill at a knife fight witnessed, to smile over a love letter, to cry for the death of a child, or to search for clues to the mystery father of our first Ames ancestor.  In the last few years I’ve become as enthralled by this work as my mother.
  

 Our intention was always to give the Collection to a major historical institution and that hasn’t changed.  But an article about our Collection in the New York Times on Sunday, January 29, 2006, created such a response from readers, publishers, literary agents and others that we now have an opportunity to do more.
  

 What’s in all these letters?  We seek an author to write a book that draws on the Collection – one that will reveal how the various generations of the family maintained close, effective family ties, even over significant distances, and bore witness to important American intellectual, religious, social and geographical trends, particularly in the 19th century.
  

 The scope of our Ames Collection is huge – 70,000 letters –  linking five generations over most of the 19th and 20th centuries from New England and Pennsylvania to Minnesota to California.  In each generation were writers whose words are fresh and compelling. Family letters (including Forbes, Revere and Delano) are most plentiful, but the correspondents also include preacher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, crusader Florence Kelley, and others who give context to the times.   
  

 The Collection is fully organized in archival boxes, has a finding guide, and is ready to use by someone willing to come to Boulder, Colorado.  There are letters, genealogies, travel journals, photos and drawings, wills and account books, sermons and lectures, and varied ephemera.  Why did our ancestors save everything?  We don’t know, but they certainly did it consciously and with love. My mother is still at it; so am I.
  

 These ancestors are people we think of by their first names.  Anne Jean (Robbins Lyman 1789-1867) married “the Judge,” a man twice her age; their home in Northampton, Mass., was a center of small town hospitality for 35 years. She was known as a delightfully funny woman whose enormous energy, discipline and generosity set a demanding example. Her children would never forget the daily bedtime admonition:  “And now, children, where are your monuments?”  -- meaning what good works had they done for another person that day?  Or had they lost an opportunity?
 

   Every generation of active Unitarian Church members found new ways to live their faith through involvement in the social issues of their times.  Anne Jean’s daughter, Susan (Lyman Lesley 1823-1904,), her husband J. Peter, and their relatives harbored and employed an escaped slave, attempted but failed to purchase her children for her, and helped to buy a house for her after the Civil War.

      Our most prominent family member was also the most engaging.  J. Peter Lesley (1819-1903) was first a Presbyterian minister whose fascination with science led to much personal conflict as well as official disapproval.  He became a distinguished geologist who headed the Second Geologic Survey of Pennsylvania for the last twenty years of his career.  His longtime position as Secretary of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia was one of many honors, yet we think of him as J. Peter, a bespectacled scientist-philosopher, his letters full of facts and vivid emotions, laced with quixotic humor, explanatory drawings, and quotations in Greek.  J. Peter was a Renaissance man but his physical and mental health often couldn’t keep up with his brain.  Fortunately he had his true love of 50 years, Susan, to ground him.
 

   J. Peter and Susan’s daughter, Mary (Lesley Ames 1853-1929) moved west to St. Paul, Minnesota, with husband Charles W. Ames (1855-1921). They and their children made many contributions to civic life there.  And Charles’s father was another unique personality, Charles Gordon Ames (1828-1912), a much beloved Unitarian minister.  He transformed himself from the rigid fundamentalist of Free Will Baptism into a tolerant humanitarian. His sense of humor about his early religious struggles shines through in A Spiritual Autobiography:  “…one of my serious problems was how to account for goodness outside of the churches.”   Active goodness without self-righteousness, how has that family value been passed along so consistently?
  

 Our Ames letters are a treasure trove of largely unpublished documents, all of them located in Boulder, Colorado. We’re very serious about the integrity of what gets done with them; fame and fortune are not our goals but neither is a scholarly opus.  We want a compatible person to work on this book for a few years.  You don’t necessarily have to be world famous (yet!), but we seek a writer with knowledge of American history and the ability to tell a story with flair.  It will take a lot of commitment – devotion is a better word – to see our project through.  We believe it will be rewarding to the writer and to his/her readers.
    

In addition to Charles’s autobiography, several other publications about family members are derived from the Collection that you may wish to consult to get additional background on the family:  Recollections of My Mother, by Susan Lyman Lesley (1889), text available on line; Peter and Susan Lesley, Life and Letters, by Mary Lesley Ames (1909); and A Spiritual Autobiography, by Charles Gordon Ames, with An Epilogue by his daughter, Alice Ames Winter.  The latter two publications are available in some libraries.  Also, you may be interested in Some Glimpses of Ames Ancestors, by Ed Wolff, Mary (Lesley Ames) Wolff, and Leila (Ames Jackson) Poullada (2001), which includes short biographical sketches and genealogical charts.  It is available at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Minnesota Historical Society.
  

 If you are interested in learning more, you may contact Linda Ames Cowan directly at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or have your agent do so through our agent, Jay Mandel at the William Morris Agency at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it