One letter talks of how there was no work in Ireland so some of the family moved to South Africa to work in the Diamond Fields. I had always wondered what had brought them to South Africa.
A cousin, Lesleigh Kardolus, who lives in South Africa still wrote me the following: "I had always wondered how John O'Driscoll became a Mormon and went to the USA. The O'Driscoll family and Rachel Knight's family lived in Humansdorp, South Africa in about the 1860's. A Mormon missionary, Miner Atwood, had been sent by Brigham Young to South Africa and in the 1860's his daughter married John Allen Knight, who was a cousin of John's mother, Rachel. Rachel's youngest sister, Martha, married Henry Smith, and in 1863 they all left for the USA aboard the ship Mexicana. The journey to Utah was really a hard one and took a few months to complete."
I have been able to meet another cousin, Denise O'Driscoll, over the internet and she transcribed and sent another letter that had been kept in her family. Denise has been doing much research of the family and has been to Ireland several times to see the O'Driscoll Castles and knows alot about the area there.
Another cousin, Karen Squires, sent me 4 letters, one is the same letter that Lesleigh had sent me. Karen writes the following about the letters: "The following 4 letters were received in February 1996 from my aunt Ellen Wilde Carpenter. They had been given to her by her mother Susie O’Driscoll Wilde. Initially they had been sent from relatives in South Africa to Susie’s father and mother, John and Sarah O’Driscoll. John, having been born in S.A. left many family members behind as he had joined the LDS Church and had come to Utah.
They were transcribed by Karen Wide Squires, a great grand daughter in March of 1996. The originals were placed in Archival Protectors along with a transcription and copies of both the originals and transcriptions were made for other family members.
The transcriptions were done to make reading the copies as easy as possible without going to the originals. The originals are very old and should be kept cool and out of the light to preserve them as long as we can.
Original spelling, grammar and composition were kept to give the reader a sense of the writer and the time of the writing. Very little could not be read but the surname of Aunt Jane seems to be the most difficult to discern. Perhaps further genealogical research will clarify her name. Any clarification is noted usually in parentheses and an occasional unreadable word is indicated with dashes. On the fourth letter, the last from Aunt Jane some of the margin notes she made were not transcribed due to their legibility and the difficulty of placing them on the new transcribed page.
They should be a great addition to the O’Driscoll family story and research.
Karen Squires"
