Esther Fussell Lewis was Graceanna Lewis' mother. Lewis proposes a course of study for her sister Elizabeth Lewis involving botany and astronomy that will allow her to learn while staying to help at home. She mentions that her friend Getty (Gertrude Kimber Burleigh, wife of Charles C. Burleigh) in is now living in Massachusetts, notes the sectional tensions between the North and the South, and describes tensions in the Society of Friends around abolitionism that prevented her uncle Bartholomew Fussell from being appointed clerk of a Meeting out of fear he would cause divisions. Closes with a discussion of a school for black children in York, the recent fair and her family's pricing of goods, her unhappiness about children being exposed to ideas about violence, some of the girls at her school, and a scientific lecture she attended recently on the origin and condition of the Arabs.

Lewis-Fussell Family Papers, SFHL-RG5-087 (explore contents)