ABSTRACT
The Peter McKellar letters resume here and include letters from the complex extended family, including Janet Claussen, Peter’s sister who married a blacksmith in Charleston, South Carolina, and took great interest in foreign and national affairs as she recorded her observations in her letters. While Peter worked his farm in Iowa his son Archibald worked for A. C. Sevey, a blacksmith at Taylor’s Falls, and for the St Croix Boom Company. The Claussens’ exact relationship is hard to decipher, but Janet’s mother’s father apparently had lived in Charleston for some 28 years. That is, her grandfather was the head of a household who emigrated with his family, probably in 1838. Janet’s letters tell of what the family of Scottish immigrants in the Deep South went through during the war. Included are letters written from relatives in Scotland, dated immediately after the war.
