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St. Charles, Missouri
January 25
1927
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Mr. G. Waldo Dunnington
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, Virginia
Dear Mr. Dunnington:
I have your recent letters and have intended replying at the first opportunity.
First let me thank you for the one received yesterday, giving information
about the Johns family in Virginia. It is true I had this information,
but I appreciate none the less your kindness in giving it to me and
am always interested in obtaining more information. A cousin of
mine in St. Louis, John Jay Johns, made some attempt last Fall but was
told that the records in that vicinity of Virginia had been burned.
Of course I realize it is the Gauss connection in which you are interested,
not the Johns, but will make two or three comments. One is that
the line you gave is my line of ancestry, (1) Col. John Johns and his
wife Elizabeth; (2) Glover and his wife Martha; (3) and their son John
Jay Johns was my grandfather, who came to St. Charles and built the
home about 75 years ago, where we are now living.
William G. Stanard, Secretary of the Virginia Historical Society, is
a relative through his mother (3) Virginia Cowan, (2) William and Elizabeth
(Johns) Cowan, - Elizabeth being a daughter of Glover and Martha Johns.
In other words, Mr.. Stanard's mother Virginia was a cousin of my mother
Elizabeth Johns Gauss. This is enough of the Johns family, as
you are probably bored already.
Now as to the will of C. F. Gauss, I have no information except
that my grandfather Eugene and his brother William of St. Louis received
their due shares of the estate. Will write my Aunt and see whether
she can tell anything more.
As to the William T. Gauss collection, I think it consists partly of
his own and partly of my Uncle Robert's. Uncle Robert lived nearby,
in Denver, and knew that Cousin William was interested. In my
own family we have had no particular collection, just a few pictures
and such information as is usually a matter of family knowledge and
conversation.
As I have mentioned before, a box containing silver and other articles
was lost at sea; this was being sent to my grandfather and his
brother, and is mentioned in one
of the letters of Theresa Gauss. My aunt, Virginia Gauss,
has a table that was sent from Germany, mahogany, as I remember.
we have packed up somewhere some volumes of C. F. Gauss' mathematical
works, but these no doubt are available elsewhere. I suppose there
are practical difficulties about making use of Cousin William's collection
anywhere but at his home or wherever he has it. I never saw his
daughter Helen. She wrote a very interesting description of her
travels in Germany in the summer of 1911 with her mother and aunt, their
visit to Brunswick and the collection in the Gauss Room of the house
where he was born, for which a George Heib was chiefly instrumental
in establishing. Then she described their meeting with Carl Gauss
and his son, Carl Joseph, and their visit to Goettingen, to the University,
to the grave of Gauss (I have a leaf of ivy from Gauss' grave), - all
leading up to a description by each of the three women of the day of
the dedication of the tower on the Hohenhagen. That was a wonderful
day and much enjoyed. The "picked mane of the German intellectual
world were there. One point brought out in conversation with some
of them was their astonishment that the invention of the telegraph is
claimed for an American, Morse, at least popularly so. It is my
understanding that the credit is due a number of men and that Morse
brought it before the public, and of course this is as far as the public
gets. My granduncle William
remembered helping his father and Weber stretch wires to the church
steeple. I am enclosing a paper (which you can keep) on this subject.
Helen Gauss and her party were told at the University that notes left
by Gauss of his researches and ideas are still being worked over at
the University, and that much of his thought and research had not bee
fully pursued, for lack of time on his part and also for the reason
that it could not be understood and appreciated by others in his day.
I am telling this from my recollection of her letters, but think I am
conveying the idea correctly.
As to my uncle, Albert Gauss, who lives in California, I feel sure he
has nothing in the way of a collection and no more in the way of information
than I have given.
Thanks for your information about the recognition in Brunswidk of the
150th anniversary of C. F. Gauss. I suppose your magazine article
is for America? Of course you know a great deal more about my
great-grandfather than I do, except from the family side, and I may
as well shock you at once by saying that I always hated mathematics
at school and loved literature and history for their appeal to the imagination.
Now, what I would like to understand and have wanted to write you about,
is at what time you will need the few pictures I have. Is it your
wish to have them at once in order to have copies made, or could this
be deferred until you are closer to the time of publication? One
picture, that of Theresa Gauss, is a daguerreotype that I have long
wanted to have copied but their never seemed to be a convenient season
to spend the money on it. In the course of a few months I might
get around to it, and at the same time have a gloss print made to send
you, as I suppose this is what you would need. We have a photographer
in St. Charles, an enterprising young many, a part of whose work is
commercial photography. Some years ago I had a fine copy made
at the same studio of the pastel portrait of Minna Waldeck Gauss.
This is the picture that suggests the pictures of the Empress Josephine,
being of the same period, - suggests, I mean, as far as general appearance
is concerned in regard to Empire dress and hair.
I am also enclosing copy of a letter written by Uncle Robert Gauss to
Dr. Felix Klein, in regard to a German biography. This was written
in September 1912; Uncle Robert died the following January. You
may keep this also, if you wish. The copy was made at that time.
Yours very sincerely,
[Anne Durfee Gauss]
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