January 2025 Newsletter.

Hello Letter Lovers...

Dear 2025

This year is already off to a rocking start at Flea Market Love Letters! In addition to a few new small but exciting series updates, we've been receiving more messages into the archive than ever before.

All in just one day recently I was speaking online to...

• A kind reader who has donated a vintage letter writing guide to the archive - thank you, again Maxine!

• A gentleman who discovered his family letters on the site as part of his genealogy research.  

• A lady who'd recently discovered a cache of seemingly 'trashed' vintage letters.  

This influx of notes from letter lovers has only served to convince me more that the need for a space to appreciate, preserve and build community around vintage handwritten letters has never been more urgent.

This is the 8th year of the archive and I've got a feeling 2025 is going to be something. 

Thanks for being along for the ride, reader. You are what makes this project hum. Here's to letters and the adventures to come!

1858

Want to know how to get a letter collector's pulse racing? Let her discover a 167 year old letter from 1858in the back catalog of the archive that isn't incredibly boring and/or about taxes. It took me days to come down from this high, folks.

Housekeeping

Remember I promised a few new small series updates? In that space between Christmas and New Year I was able to do some long over do light housekeeping on the back end of the archive. I've added a few 'new' letter series like the 'Powell' and 'Merrell' letters including several new single additions to the 'Miscellaneous' collection. 

I also used the downtime to update the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s collection pages on the site for easy browsing by your favorite decade. Happy letter reading!

Handwriting Help

Even after transcribing over 700 letters, I still get stumped by penmanship. Earlier this month I shared an example of a letter I was struggling to decode. Thank you to the many who sprang to help with suggestions!

If you enjoyed that challenge, consider checking out this call out from the National Archives in the U.S. to help them transcribe some of their paper records. 

History Comes Alive

Recently 60 students from Co. Longford participated in a writing competition where they were tasked to write letters as a solider, nurse or medic living during WW1. Now this is the kind of assignment that almost has me missing school.

24 Hours of Letters

On February 8th -- in conjunction with World Cancer Day -- the team at From Me to You are holding their first ever 24 hour letter writing marathon. You read that right! For 24 hours you'll be able to login and join fellow letter writers. 

Write More Letters

I can hardly believe that this year will make 5 (!!!!!) years since we launched the Write More Letters project. Let's make 2025 the year that this simple idea to #WRITEMORELETTERS gets out there. I've got some plans in store and thank goodness I've my WML coffee mug because it's going to take energy! But that's never been something we're short of in the Flea Market Love Letters community.