Victoria Moor Coolidge to her son Calvin: undated.

One of the few surviving letters of Coolidge’s mother, undated but likely penned the year before Victoria passed away, 1885. Victoria Moor Coolidge was born in Plymouth. Coolidge describes his mother in his Autobiography as “practically an invalid ever after I could remember her… but used what strength she had in lavish care upon me and my sister.” The disease Victoria suffered from was likely tuberculosis. The Abbie referenced here is Coolidge’s sister. Abbie was born in 1875, three years after Coolidge. Coolidge said of his mother’s death “The greatest grief that can come to a boy came to me. Life was never to seem the same again.”

The letter was probably written when Coolidge was visiting family in the Ludlow/Proctorsville area of Vermont, about 12 miles south of Plymouth Notch. Victoria mentions “Aunt Sarah” who is Victoria’s older sister Sarah Pollard. Coolidge would later attend Ludlow’s Black River Academy, staying at the Pollard house on weekends when he did not come home to Plymouth. Coolidge said of his aunt: “She was wonderfully kind to me and did all she could to take the place of my mother in affection for me and good influence over me while I was at the Academy.”