By Eliza Hallabeck

 So wrote Levan to Jennie on June 12, 1856. Flowers he had picked from his Newtown home’s garden on his return from school earlier in the night were near him as he wrote.

“In the morning, if my life be spared until then,” wrote Levan, “I will arrange them in a bouquet as well as I can, and, should an opportunity present itself, send them to you.”

Town Historian Dan Cruson discovered Levan’s letter recently in Ezra L. Johnson’s “stash.” As Newtown’s first town historian, Mr Johnson and his wife, Jane E. Johnson, accrued many papers over their lifetime together. Some of the couple’s papers have been keeping Newtown’s current historian busy.

“This is getting to be an interesting one,” Mr Cruson said of discovering the letter. “I have not been able to find Jennie in all the genealogy work we’ve done.”

The identity of Levan was also a guess at first. Mr Cruson assumed Levan was Levan Johnson, one of Ezra’s three sons. However, Levan Johnson had not gone on to marry a woman named Jennie. Also, he had eventually moved to Ohio.

The year the letter was written, said Mr Cruson, would have been a time of innocence in Newtown, with the budding couple falling in love before America’s Civil War.

The letter did make it clear that Levan and Jennie knew each other from social circles. Mr Cruson says the two could have met at what was referred to in other Newtown documents as “The Singing School” or while attending church.

While brimming with proof of Levan’s love for Jennie, the letter did not contain any further hints to the identity of its writer or recipient.

“Perhaps you have flowers like these, given to you every day,” wrote Levan, “but when I look upon my flowers I think of you, and wish you could share them with me. Although I have nothing very rare. We have enough such as they are — Would that I could have the pleasure of giving you a bunch every morning when they are beautiful as their tiny leaves glisten with dew and the morning air is filled with their fragrance.”

Roughly a week after coming across Levan and Jennie’s letter, Mr Cruson discovered another letter that shed light on Levan and Jennie’s love.

Jennie’s sister, Julia Ann, wrote a letter to Jennie in 1857. In the letter, Julia Ann told her sister she had accompanied Levan on a walk.

“The subject of a great part of our conversation has been yourself,” Julia wrote. “He wished me to speak truly with him on the subject which has been so long agitated between yourself and him, and I decidedly told him a decision ought to be made. And if he felt that he could not go with you, that you must go with him. He is very fond of you, and feels that his future happiness will be greatly augmented could a union be affected. Indeed he would not be happy without you.”

Knowing Julia Ann was Jennie’s sister, Mr Cruson established Jennie as Jane Eliza, another daughter of Beach and Catherine Foote Camp. Jane Eliza married Ezra L. Johnson on October 10, 1858. Jane Eliza’s nickname was Jennie, and Mr Johnson was then referred to by his middle name, Levan.

With Levan and Jennie’s identities now known, the letters provide a new look at the couple who went on to publish the first history of Newtown, Newtown: 1705–1918, published by the Bee Publishing Co. in 1917. The book was started by Mr Johnson, and then completed following Mr Johnson’s death in December 1914, according to its title page, “with additional material prepared by Jane Eliza Johnson, The Historian’s Life Companion.”

Mr Cruson is still working his way through the piles of paper in Mr Johnson’s “stash.” A week after identifying Levan and Jennie, Mr Cruson discovered another wrinkle in the couple’s courtship.

Another man had his heart set on Jennie.

“Oh how my heart would leap to see you, and imprint on your sweet lips a kiss,” Philip wrote to Jennie on February 2, 1857, roughly eight months after Mr Johnson’s flowering letter to his eventual bride.

Philip’s letter, Mr Cruson pointed out, makes it clear that “Jennie” had a decision to make between Mr Johnson and this Philip.

Unlike Mr Johnson’s letter, in which he compared Jane Eliza to flowers, Philip wrote to “Jennie my friend” about the cold nights Newtown was suffering that February.

“Oh Jennie, I wish you were here to sleep with me tonight,” Philip wrote, before noting his sense of humor, “haha,” and continuing. “I feel just like having one of my spasmodic laughing fits, such has come over me.”

Whatever happened within the love triangle is either lost to common knowledge, or waiting for Mr Cruson to unfold it within another letter during his ongoing investigation of Mr Johnson’s remaining paperwork, all saved by Mrs Johnson and now located in Mr Cruson’s office at Edmond Town Hall.

As for the fate of Levan and his Jennie, the couple’s golden anniversary, Mr Cruson pointed out, was celebrated 50 years later, in 1908, with a feature spread in The Newtown Bee.

“So obviously, it was a successful marriage,” said Mr Cruson.