Original holograph letter signed and dated New York, Tuesday morning, March 19, 1851

In fine condition.. Single sheet folded to make four 24 x 19 cm pages, approximately 1,000 words. A letter from 21-year-old Julia White Peck (1829-1859) to her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Henry Marsh of St. Louis, Missouri. Julia was about to travel to Turkey to serve as a Christian missionary with her fiancé, Rev. Dwight Marsh, who was stationed in Mosul (then part of Turkey). Her knowledge of Turkey came from the letters she had received from Dwight Marsh and conversations with a missionary, Thomas Laurie, who had recently returned to New York from Turkey. She expresses concern about "mingling with oppressed and degraded beings . . . a people whose habits and morals are so much inferior to ours." She had been told of "the moral degradation, the deceitfulness, ingratitude of the Arabs, of the low condition of our own sex. Oh it is a dark picture and one which makes a woman cling to the delightful privilege of her own sweet home in America." But, she writes, she will persevere in her work on behalf of Christianity. In online searches, the following is ascertained about Julia Peck's tragic story. Shortly after her letter to Mrs. Henry Marsh, Dwight Marsh (1823-1896) returned to the US to marry Julia Peck. They traveled back to Mosul together. They had a son there, Waldo, born in 1854. He died in Mosul on May 5, 1859. Julia died three months later, also in Mosul. They were later buried in Hartford, Connecticut. Dwight Marsh returned to the US in 1860, and was thereafter an educator and pastor.