The Stinson Letters — Jack Beddall

I have previously published two books about the Stinson family from information gathered in their journals. A Man in the West covers the journey from St. Louis to Idaho City, Idaho of Laura and Jimmy Cullop and Granger Stinson. It was written as a narrative, told through the eyes of Granger, who for that period of time was known to all as Moot. The information was spread over several journals, and was in no particular order. I attempted to arrange the information in an accurate chronological order. When that book was published, John Stinson asked me if I would be interested in editing their journals and covering the 1878-1879 time frame from when they arrived in Idaho City until the marriage of Granger and Laura in September of 1879. That book was published as The Stinson Journals.
In addition to the journals that both Laura and Granger kept, the family (meaning Laura, I am sure) also kept either originals or duplicates of all letters, telegrams, newspaper articles, school papers, and any other written record of their lives. I used several of the letters and telegrams in editing and presenting The Stinson Journals, inserting them into the journals at the appropriate times to add clarification to the journal entry. It was in sorting and arranging these letters that I first saw the necessity for this book.
While the journals are fascinating in their detail, they sometimes contain thoughts or information which seems to be too personal or private to share beyond the books in which those thoughts were written. This was an issue I struggled with constantly in editing those journals for publication. When I came upon such entries, I asked myself two questions: does the information add to the story, and is it necessary for the story? If the particular entry could not pass the test of both questions, I left it out.
In a sense, however, letters allow the writers to do their own editing. Although some letters are admittedly personal, the fact about them is that they were intended for someone else to read. Laura had her letters grouped by person; for instance there was an entire bundle of Winnie Longley letters, and another for correspondence to Lacy Cullop. This presented the same kind of issue I struggled with in Journals. I could either group the letters by person, as Laura had them grouped, or order them chronologically. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. John and I decided to order them chronologically, regardless of who they were to or from. This is the opposite of the approach we took with the journals, but we felt it gave a much better picture of the ebb and flow of their lives.
Another issue which presents itself to nearly every historian or editor is the sheer volume of information available. This is true with the Stinson letters. There are over five hundred letters between Laura and Granger, and over one hundred with Winnie Longley. Although all, in a way, deserved to be included, space limitations, as always, prevailed. For the letters from Winnie, most had two dates on them -- one when they were written, and one that Laura noted, which I assumed was when she received them. I noted both dates, and entered them at the dates they were received, rather than the dates they were written.
Some of the letters, especially between Laura and Granger, had no date when they were originally written, but had dates noted on them. Without exception, these added dates were in Laura's handwriting. I have included the dates for each correspondence, regardless of how it came to be on the letter. My notation for this was that if the date was added by Laura, I put it in parentheses. I also put the dates of the letters in bold print simply to make them easier to identify. All other notations I made strictly for clarification purposes are in italics.
The last major issue was the length of time the letters covered. In A Man in the West, the time frame was a little over a year. In The Stinson Journals