Ranney Letters Intro

One of my first forays into publishing Primary Sources was a cache of family letters I discovered in a manila folder in metal file cabinet in the town museum of Ashfield, Massachusetts. They were a collection that spanned decades, from a half-dozen of the brothers of Henry Sears Ranney. Henry’s claim to fame among members of the little community of museum volunteers was that he had been town clerk for over fifty years. Before that, he was a merchant and a supplier of Ashfield’s famous essence peddlers. Henry was a member of the family responsible for bringing peppermint to Ashfield and then later to southwestern Michigan. I’ll be publishing a series of videos about the individual letters in this series, in the Primary Sources section of MakingHistory but since this post is more about where and how I found the letters, I thought I’d post it here. More to come, soon!