Catherine Lawn Preston

Now That You Are Married Do Not Always Expect The Lover

December 1967

We are not sure exactly what it is that married women tell their little sisters about marriage nowadays, but it is certainly not very much like the letter we publish here. It was written in a spidery hand from a home on the newly settled upper Mississippi to a young bride, Mrs. Oliver Ormerod, back in Liverpool, England, and the advice it gives says more than any long treatise about the apologetic, indeed timorous, position of women only a century and a half ago. Mrs. Ormerod was the greatgrandmother of our editor. She is shown in an old miniature about the time she married her Anglican minister, and before she reared a large family of sons.

Prestons Retreat, Carrollton February 6th, 1838

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