Immigration to the other side of the world creates immense physical separation. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it was to maintain contact a hundred or more years ago, when today we have the ability to remain in touch at the press of a button, phoning, sending a text message, and even making a video call.

When my 3x great-grandfather James McGrath emigrated in the mid-1800s, he left his parents behind in Ireland. They would have written letters, which took some time to arrive, and when family died, contact was likely lost. So how unnerving it must have been on Christmas Eve 1908 for James to receive a letter written and sent by his mother in Ireland in 1856. A letter lost for more than 50 years!

Newspapers reported the astonishing circumstances, including James’ local paper the Mudgee Guardian:

“Wonders will never cease, and of strange happenings there is no end….It was a reply to a letter sent by Mr McGrath from Australia, and the hand that penned it has been at rest for many a year, while through half a century it has lain in some Post Office, or travelled in strange countries in endless quest of its owner. It was a strange happening, indeed, that old letter, written in the little Irish village, in a past generation, when the spring sun shone on the green meadows, and delivered in Mudgee in the tropical glow of Christmas Eve after fifty years.”

Excerpt from ‘Local Brevities’, Mudgee Guardian and North Western Representative, 2 January 1908, p. 11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article157668044, accessed 28 April 2015.

I only know about this story because it made the newspaper. I wish I could read the letter, and I wonder what happened to it. Perhaps it became a precious keepsake, a memory for James of his mother. Maybe one of his descendants still has it.

Selected references

‘Local Brevities’, Mudgee Guardian and North Western Representative, 2 January 1908, p. 11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article157668044, accessed 28 April 2015.

‘A Christmas Surprise’, The Evening Telegraph, 13 January 1908, p. 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article214832768, accessed 18 October 2024.

‘Letter Fifty Years Old’, The Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 7 January 1908, p. 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article61544195, accessed 18 October 2024.

‘A Voice From the Tomb’, The Express and Telegraph, 2 January 1908, p. 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article208909633, accessed 18 October 2024.

‘A Letter Fifty Years Old’, National Advocate, 3 January 1908, p. 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article157185844, accessed 18 October 2024.