Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Leon and Hope Stevens Correspondence, 1916, in the Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Collection, Accession # 10875 -bj, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

These items were purchased by the University of Virginia Library from Charles Apfelbaum, Watchung, New Jersey, on December 10, 1998.

Scope and Content Information

This collection consists of nine individual letters and a letter book kept by Leon F. Stevens, containing the correspondence between Stevens, stationed with the 168th Company, Coast Artillery [Company?], at Fort Monroe, Virginia, in 1916, and his fiancee, Hope, who was working as a nurse in Hartford, Connecticut. The letters are chiefly concerned with their courtship and engagement, and his plans to leave the Army on July 7, 1916, but occasionally mention other topics.

These subjects include: seeing a ship captured by the Germans on the high seas, rumored to be a passenger liner plying between England and South America, which will probably be interned at Newport News or Norfolk, Virginia (1916 Feb 1); exhibitions of flying machines and the aviator school at Newport News, Virginia (1916 Feb 2); Stevens' attitude, as a Northerner, to the race relations between white and black Southerners (1916 Mar 5); the visit of Woodrow and Edith Wilson to the area (1916 Mar 13); concern over whether the United States could be drawn into World War I (1916 Mar [14]); and in his last entry of the letter book, Stevens informs Hope that his company will go to Georgia on April 13 for mobilization in the field service, possibly for use along the border with Mexico (1916 Apr 9).