loc.03134.002_large.jpg
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
loc.03134.001_large.jpg
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Tufthunter: Two Unpublished Whitman Letters and Some Identifications," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 1 (1983),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]