Fortuitous Discovery
In 1979 William Gayton, current owner of the home at 143 Groveland, found two old letters in a ‘cubby hole’ uncovered while he was working on the bricks in his fireplace. One of the letters was from an R.R. Church to Mollie, and at the time Gayton did not know the identity of the letter writer or recipient.
Through friends, Gayton and his wife Elva connected with Ellen Henle, a historian at Oberlin College who had been researching black women at the college in the nineteenth century; Henle realized that the recipient of the letter was Mary Eliza (Mollie) Church.
The Gaytons' tale of the discovery was told in an article in the Elyria, Ohio newspaper the Chronicle Telegram on February 13, 1980: “Voices from the past: Letters found in attic hint at life of famed black woman,” by Debbie Courtright. The Library of Congress acquired the letter from the Gaytons in 1981.
