The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to L. A. McMurray, 24 June 1890
Date: June 24, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03134
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt
Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Notes for this letter were created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Ian Faith, Ryan Furlong, Blake Bronson-Bartlett, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Camden New Jersey1
June 24 1890
Received Five Dollars2 from L A McMurray3 of Webster City, Iowa, by request of Charles Aldrich.4
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
L. A. McMurray was the
President of Hamilton County National Bank in Webster City, Iowa. He was also a
Treasurer and on the Board of Directors for the Crooked Creek Railroad and Coal
Company, which ran between the Iowa towns of Lehigh and Webster City.
Notes:
1. This postcard is addressed: L A McMurray | Hamilton Co: National Bank | Webster City | Iowa. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Jun 25 | 8 PM| 90. [back]
2. On June 12, 1884, Walt Whitman had sent a transcription of "O Captain! My Captain!" and portraits to Aldrich. [back]
3. L. A. McMurray was the President of Hamilton County National Bank in Webster City, Iowa. He was also a Treasurer and on the Board of Directors for the Crooked Creek Railroad and Coal Company, which ran between the Iowa towns of Lehigh and Webster City. [back]
4. Charles Aldrich (1828–1908) was an ornithologist, a member of the Iowa House of Representatives, an infantry captain in the Civil War, and founder of the Iowa Historical Department. He was also an avid autograph collector, especially of Whitman's. He was so eager that the poet termed him "a very hungry man . . . never satisfied—is always crying for more and more" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Tuesday, August 20, 1889). Aldrich visited Whitman at his Camden home numerous times, and he served as a conduit between the poet and William Michael Rossetti in England, who edited the first British edition of Whitman's work. For more information, see Ed Folsom, "The Mystical Ornithologist and the Iowa Tufthunter: Two Unpublished Whitman Letters and Some Identifications," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 1 (1983), 18–29. [back]