It was the day before Mother’s Day in 1919 in northwestern France, and the young American soldier was missing his mom.
So he did what boys back in 1919 did. He wrote her a letter, one that would melt the heart of any mother, especially one whose son is fighting in a war across an ocean.
“How I would like to step in and surprise you tomorrow!” Carl Howe wrote to his mom. “Not an hour of the day goes by but what I think of you, and thoughts of you, and the much good advice you have always given me has always been a bright star for me to follow. And I shall always have those little visions and nothing in the world can dim the bright guiding light that it is to me.”
Perhaps a little shy of the emotion he was expressing, Howe confessed he would not normally write such a letter. “However, in a Mother’s Day letter I think such thoughts should be expressed in words.”
More than 100 years later, Howe’s letter back home was up for auction for $150 on eBay when a researcher at MyHeritage.com found it, recognizing it for the treasure it is.
But would the researcher be able to track down Howe’s family?
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An exciting find
Roi Mandel was surfing around on eBay when he came across Howe’s affectionate letter. As the director of research at MyHeritage, Mandel knew immediately just how important it was.
“We read the letter and it was just beautiful and it was obvious for us that we needed to bring this back home and return it to the rightful owner,” Mandel told USA TODAY from his home outside Tel Aviv, Israel. “It should be in good hands, it shouldn’t be sold on eBay.”
MyHeritage bought the letter from the seller for about $150 and then got to work to track down Howe’s family.
The research team started with the signature, delivery address and Howe’s mother’s name. From there, they were able to find the family’s details in the U.S. Census, Howe’s enlistment record and documents marking his marriage and death. He died of tuberculosis in 1928 at the age of 36.
The researchers soon found the obituary of Howe’s only daughter, who was just 6 years old when her dad died. From there, they found the names of her children. One of them was Jan Bellis-Squires of Beaverton, Oregon.
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A letter reaches home
More than 100 years after Howe wrote the letter, it finally got delivered at the end of April to the granddaughter he never met. Just in time for Mother’s Day.
“This is just a treasure for me to be able to see the handwriting and read the words that my grandfather, who I never knew, wrote to his mother on Mothers Day,” an emotional Bellis-Squires said in a video recording of her reading the letter out loud.
“By all accounts, he was a brilliant, kind man, and I dearly wish I could have known him,” she said.
Mandel said the happy ending was particularly exciting for his team “because it is a piece of history that has now been put back in its place.”
“The moment we found this very personal letter, of a soldier writing to his mother on Mother’s Day, from the battlefield − hoping to return home soon − we felt that we had to do everything to return it to his descendants,” he said.
“It is the kind of treasure that may not have material value, but it has sentimental and mostly historical value … It will be passed on to future generations.”
