Gunn Family · Primary Sources
Voices
Memoirs, diaries, letters, and published writing — the Gunn family in their own words across four centuries.
The Rights of a People
Montague's reply to the Boston Committee of Correspondence, written by Dr. Moses Gunn in the spring of 1773. It claims the rights of Christians, men, and British subjects, denies that a Parliament three thousand miles away can bind the colonies in all cases, and condemns general warrants.
A Letter from the Army of the James
Written the day after the fight at Deep Bottom, Sgt. Henry H. Gunn tells his Aunt Rhoda that her husband, George Almon Gunn, was shot dead at the Confederate earthworks, and lists the few things he has saved to send home.
Living in La Salle: The Oral History of Carroll Gunn
Recorded in 1976, Carroll Gunn, grandson of Aaron Gunn, recalls an abolitionist grandfather who hid a freedom seeker under a load of straw, the family farm that gave Gunn Avenue its name, and everyday life in La Salle, Illinois, at the turn of the twentieth century.
The Diary of Lizzie Gunn
A six-week journey east in 1867 — from Illinois to the ancestral Gunn homestead at Montague, Massachusetts, and on to kin in Ohio and Indiana — kept in the hand of twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth "Lizzie" Gunn.
An Interesting Piano
Told in the voice of the piano itself, three great-granddaughters recall the Boston square grand Aaron Gunn bought for his wife Nancy — and the thread that ties it to Emily Dickinson.
Letter from President Theodore Roosevelt to Mrs. Abby G. Baker
Roosevelt writes directly to Abby Gunn Baker to emphatically oppose a proposal to add an upper story to the White House east terrace for a portrait gallery — calling it a 'genuine architectural outrage.'
Mrs. Abby G. Baker Dies in Hospital
Widely known writer and promoter of education of women in Orient — the Evening Star's obituary of Abby Gunn Baker, January 1923.
A Little Wayfarer
A five-year-old girl watches a wandering man and his small son from her grandmother's window — and decides, quietly, to do something about it.