Friday, March 14, 2014
The Waterloo Regional Heritage Foundation and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies jointly funded the cost of transcribing and translating 174 letters, more than 300 pages in Old German script. These were discovered in bundles of business and personal correspondence wrapped and labelled by Louis P. Breithaupt (1827-1880) and presumably not unwrapped since that time.
The letters were almost all written between 1852 and 1863, a decade critical in the fortunes of the Breithaupt family, and are among the earliest documents of local German families in Special Collections & Archives. They shed light on previously undocumented aspects of the family’s activities, filling many gaps in the historical record, and include letters to and from correspondents Louis P. Breithaupt, his wife Catherine (Hailer) Breithaupt, Jacob and Margaret Wagner, and Jacob Hailer, among others.
Among the letters is one dated December 2, 1852, a reply from Catherine Hailer to Louis Breithaupt’s proposal of marriage. The answer was a somewhat cautious yes, and the couple were married two months later. Equal parts humdrum domestic detail and emotional highs and lows, these letters add important context to an understanding of the history of the Waterloo Region.
The letters were transcribed and translated by Dr. Susan Thorne from Kingston, Ontario who has a special skill in reading German handwriting from the 17th century to the present.
The Library thanks the Waterloo Regional Heritage Foundation and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies for their support in this project.
For more information, contact:
Jane Britton
Head, Special Collections and Archives
519-888-4567 ext. 32445
