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Gena Branscombe Letter - October 1940

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  A letter dated October 31 st , 1940 written by Gena Branscombe.  Her penmanship is its usual “difficult to read” or “hard to decipher” words yet her message is of friendly warmth and happiness to have helped a friend of a friend.  Written on The Branscombe Choral stationery, she is returning to a Mrs. Grambling a piece of autographed linen.  Autographed linen?  Someone had a hobby of collecting autographs on linen?  Intriguing!   Collecting famous people’s autographs and letters was a popular hobby a century or more ago.  Once collected they were put in a scrapbook.  This letter was found in one of those books, though the autographed linen piece was not.    As Gena says, “What an interesting idea!”  My thoughts on that “idea” is someone was creating a table cloth of autographs, a blanket or making an artistic piece to be framed – my idea. Who was Mrs. Grambling to whom the letter is addressed or Mrs. Davis who Gena me...