Anna: Letters from the attic

At the turn of the century and before the bridge, a young love spanned the Mississippi River, a love recorded in letters found in an attic nearly 100 years later. The letters, from Anna Delia Fournier of Otsego to Laurence Albee Dare of Elk River, tell the fascinating story of life in the Elk River-Otsego area before there was a bridge, of the old-fashioned and touching romance between the young woman of Acadian French-Canadian Catholic antecedents and the young man descended from Protestant Pilgrims.

"Oh, I wish I had two hearts so you could have one and the rest of humanity could share the other. But, as it is, you can't have it all!" (Letter from Anna to Laurence, January 1904)

"You were very brave not to get scared of those wolves or the dark ever. You must think an awful lot of me to stand all that just to come to see an insignificant little rustic French maid." (Letter from Anna to Laurence, November 1904)