Project Launch: Sarah Underwood digital collection

The newly digitized Sarah Underwood papers are now available online through our Iowa Connections page.  As Kim Anderson described in a previous blog post which focused on Underwood’s experiences with being a new mother, her papers are a revealing window into the life of a mid-19th century woman living in eastern Iowa. Primarily containing Underwood’s…

Motherhood realness in 1850s Iowa

I will give you the “youngest” for a birthday present if you will come for her. “I’m not joking,” I get better very slowly. So begins Sarah Underwood’s letter to her sister Ann two weeks after giving birth to Mary Lillian Underwood. Sarah was 30 years old and had been living in Iowa for about…