In early April 2020, the Executive Director of the Oswego Heritage Council received a phone call from a resident in First Addition, Lake Oswego, wanting to know if we would like a cache of "vintage letters" she found in her attic. The collection would end up consisting of 306 love letters to Charles Benjamin Hill, a lifelong Oswego resident, from multiple young women he met during his travels.
The letters were organized, scanned, and transcribed as written with misspellings, grammatical errors, and non sequiturs. The Oswego Heritage Council's research team added explanatory footnotes, family histories, and genealogies to provide an understanding of the lives of these women.
This is a condensed version, available online in a storymap format and with highlights from the people who wrote to him. If you would like to read the full copy, please visit the Heritage House or the Lake Oswego Public Library.
