This letter collection was collected by Judge Kenneth Lyons. The earliest date of the letters is 1862, from Bourbon and Nicholas Counties, Kentucky. Some letters are fragments.
Etta Evans Gilmore was born in Fleming County, Kentucky, on February 4, 1885, to Robert Evans and Matilda Fawns. She married Henry Steele Gilmore, a Bath County physician, around 1906. Their son Robert was born in 1906 and daughter Lorena in 1910.