Two-Century-Old Courtship Letters to Be Auctoioned

choi

(1) Eve M Kahn, Forbidden Romance in 19th-Century Brooklyn. New York Times, June 3, 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/0 ... ne-austen-plot.html

Note:
(a) "On June 21, Swann Auction Galleries will offer Jane Schenck’s correspondence with an unsuitable suitor named Ralph Malbone. * * * Apparently they had met in Brooklyn around 1810, although it is not known how.  Mr Malbone was jobless and seven years older than Miss Schenck age 18 in 1810]; she warned him that her relatives, prosperous landowners and slaveholders of Dutch descent, would consider him 'low company.' "
(i) The German and Dutch surnames Schenck/Schenk are "from Middle High German, Middle Dutch schenke, 'cupbearer,' 'wine server' (from Old High German scenko, from scenken 'to pour out or serve')."
(ii)
(A) company (n): "A person or people seen as a source of such friendship and enjoyment  <she is excellent company>  <Jackson['s] * * * warmth and sense of humour made him excellent company>"
http://www.oxforddictionaries.co ... can_english/company
(B) company (n): "<know a person by the company she keeps>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/company

(b) "The Brooklyn Museum owns a diary kept by Miss Schenck as a teenager along with roomfuls of other artifacts from her family's ancestral homes. It does not mention Mr Malbone until their wedding day, in 1815. Kevin Stayton, the deputy director of the Brooklyn Museum, who has studied the family for decades, said that before the Swann lot emerged, he had never understood why Miss Schenck had married someone seemingly out of the blue."

Public Support. Brooklyn Museum, undated
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/about/public-support/
("The Brooklyn Museum is a not-for-profit corporation whose Trustees operate the Museum in a building owned by the City of New York. The People of the City of New York provide major funding for the Museum's operations through the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs")

(c) "During the War of 1812 * * * Miss Schenck worried that he would end up 'a bleeding sacrifice to the cruel, cruel weapons of a mad-brain'd war.' "

mad-brained (adj): "RASH, HOTHEADED"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mad-brained
(d) "Jane and Ralph Malbone raised four children and remained married until her death in 1843 [age 51]."
(e) "Mr [Ralph] Malbone eventually remarried, and he and his [second] wife had a son, also named Ralph, who exhausted the family fortune and ended up working as a stableman [a person who works in a stable for horses] for a Brooklyn hotel.

choi

(2) Sale 2420 Lot 228' Estimate $2,000 - 3,000. Swann Auction Galleries, undated.
http://catalogue.swanngalleries. ... 13807&saletype=

Note:
(a) "On 16 September 1812, Ralph wrote from the frontier village of Addison, NY to announce his new occupation"

Addison, New York
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addison,_New_York
(map)
(b) "One of his later letters (9 April 1813) is written on verso of his promotional broadside, promising protection from 'the Small Pox' through the 'Kine Pock inoculation.' "
(i) verso
ww.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/verso
(ii) cowpox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox
(section 2 Kinepox)

* kine
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kine