Very Respectfully, Allie E. Brady
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| Embossed Aluminum Spectacles Case (Possibly Edwardian Era) Private Collection of Beth Peel Leggieri |
Now its keeper, it rests safely behind a glassed-in bookcase. I am charged with attaching its significance to the vapor trail left by my paternal great-grandmother, the remarkable Sarah Elizabeth Thompson (Heifner) Brady (1856-1941). To her contemporary friends and family she was known as "Sallie" and later as "Dompey" to her grandchildren and beyond.
The spectacles case spans time and place, connecting her to the generations who followed her. Surely well over 120 years old, it remains in excellent condition, still cleanly opening and snapping shut. Sallie would have opened and shut this case at least twice a day—in the morning when she began her bustling days’ activities, and in the evening when for most of her life, she would have lit the gaslights as she put her considerable household to rest—removing her spectacles and placing them in the case for the night. Did Sallie place them in the case for an afternoon nap? Surely she would have liked the opportunity.
Also among my grandmother’s effects was a well-yellowed letter from her father, Alfred (“Allie”) Edmund Brady (1844-1922), the fiery Englishman who ‘ran away’ from a village outside Birmingham at age 16 to arrive at Castle Gardens amid the Civil War. Allie’s legacy includes his dual veteran career: he is among the estimated number of 6000 soldiers who served both the Union and the Confederacy. Considering Allie’s deep Quaker heritage, this is a curious anomaly.
His letter to Sallie offers a definitive and personal moment of exchange between them, their introduction. Deft use of his English schoolboy education fleshes out Allie, allowing us to read his own words in his own hand, a 40-year old widower with a plan. Sallie saw his heart. Allie Brady was a romantic despite his desperation.
The spectacles case spans time and place, connecting her to the generations who followed her. Surely well over 120 years old, it remains in excellent condition, still cleanly opening and snapping shut. Sallie would have opened and shut this case at least twice a day—in the morning when she began her bustling days’ activities, and in the evening when for most of her life, she would have lit the gaslights as she put her considerable household to rest—removing her spectacles and placing them in the case for the night. Did Sallie place them in the case for an afternoon nap? Surely she would have liked the opportunity.
Also among my grandmother’s effects was a well-yellowed letter from her father, Alfred (“Allie”) Edmund Brady (1844-1922), the fiery Englishman who ‘ran away’ from a village outside Birmingham at age 16 to arrive at Castle Gardens amid the Civil War. Allie’s legacy includes his dual veteran career: he is among the estimated number of 6000 soldiers who served both the Union and the Confederacy. Considering Allie’s deep Quaker heritage, this is a curious anomaly.
His letter to Sallie offers a definitive and personal moment of exchange between them, their introduction. Deft use of his English schoolboy education fleshes out Allie, allowing us to read his own words in his own hand, a 40-year old widower with a plan. Sallie saw his heart. Allie Brady was a romantic despite his desperation.
Maysfield, Milam Co, Texas
Sep. 25th 1884
Mrs. Sallie Heifner, I presume you will be a good deal surprised to receive a letter from me, being comparatively a stranger to me, but I trust my letter will be more (?) welcome to you. I have heard your name mentioned so much by Mrs. Lester and Miss Cora who seemed to have formed strong attachments for “Miss Sallie” that I feel it would be quite a pleasure to have the friendship and acquaintance of Miss Sallie myself unless you think differently. It’s true you never saw me but two or three times that I am aware of and I never saw you but twice, but
I would respectfully ask for the pleasure of calling on you at your pleasure, you can state when. I thought I might have the pleasure of shaking your hand this afternoon, but you willed it otherwise, as you did not give me the chance to even look at you.
Beth Peel Leggieri, Heir Unapparent
Copyright © HeirUnapparent, 2020. All rights reserved.
Sep. 25th 1884
Mrs. Sallie Heifner, I presume you will be a good deal surprised to receive a letter from me, being comparatively a stranger to me, but I trust my letter will be more (?) welcome to you. I have heard your name mentioned so much by Mrs. Lester and Miss Cora who seemed to have formed strong attachments for “Miss Sallie” that I feel it would be quite a pleasure to have the friendship and acquaintance of Miss Sallie myself unless you think differently. It’s true you never saw me but two or three times that I am aware of and I never saw you but twice, but
Everybody who speaks of you speak in such glowing and charming terms that I would like to have an opportunity of forming an opinion not that I doubt that said parties are correct in their opinion, but it would afford me so much pleasure to form an acquaintance of such an amiable person as yourself. I am not resorting to flattery to get your consent to form an acquaintance. I am honest and sincere in my confessions. I have been living here for 19 years. I cannot say I am perfection, but think I am possibly an average man in standing and integrity. Your good Father has known me for many years, but I have no idea of his opinion of me, it may be a bad one, but I hope not.
If you kindly allow me the pleasure of corresponding with you, and correspondence shall be strictly private and I know you are too much of a lady to hand my letters around to be read by “bosom friends.”
I would respectfully ask for the pleasure of calling on you at your pleasure, you can state when. I thought I might have the pleasure of shaking your hand this afternoon, but you willed it otherwise, as you did not give me the chance to even look at you.
Trusting you may favor me with an early answer.
I am
Very Respectfully,
Allie E. Brady
I am
Very Respectfully,
Allie E. Brady
(On the back in manner of a post-script):
Mrs. Lester and Miss Cora are not aware I am writing you and they have no idea of such a thing. I mention this for fear that you might think I had been prompted to write. Mrs. Lester intended to call on you, but the rain hurried us off.
Mrs. Lester and Miss Cora are not aware I am writing you and they have no idea of such a thing. I mention this for fear that you might think I had been prompted to write. Mrs. Lester intended to call on you, but the rain hurried us off.
Did the spectacles case rest on her night table the day she opened the envelope from Allie Brady? A recent widow, losing husband Columbus Heifner the year before, and mother of two small girls, what thoughts raced through her mind as she read his letter? Was she filled with compassion for Allie, widowed just two months earlier and left with six motherless children? Did gratitude and hope swell her heart? Was her reaction pragmatic or might it have included a hint of anticipation?
Upon its reading, Sallie may have removed her spectacles, placed them in their case, and decisively shut it as she then sat back in her chair to ponder the possibilities before her.
Allie’s letter reveals the social services of the day, a community that provided both support and connection. Allie and Sallie spent little time hashing out perceived challenges or the wisdom of a hasty marriage. On Nov. 28, 1884, just over two months from the letter’s composition, their solution was the classic one pursued by families still raw with grief. Blending their families, they began anew as a married couple.
Their shared farming communities lay in the ‘Brazos Bottoms,’ their homes and crops sited in the rich alluvial soil along the Brazos River. To this central Texas region fled a massive post-Civil War migration from the South, all hoping for new opportunities to begin again in a latitude familiar to them where their farming practices could be transferred.
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| Sarah “Sallie” Elizabeth Thompson (Heifner) Brady 1856 (Alabama) - 1941 (Texas) |
Both Allie and Sallie arrived in cluster migrations, each with families allied through marriage ranging from quite elderly to quite young children.
Allie migrated with his first wife’s Hollingsworth family from Georgia. Sallie’s Thompson and Ghent cluster traveled from Alabama. Among the cluster were Sallie’s aunt and uncle; her siblings; her Civil War veteran father and blind mother, Elijah and Augusta (Ghent) Thompson; and her grandmother, Nancy (Wilson) Ghent born 1796, just 20 years after the Declaration of Independence was penned.
Sallie’s maternal grandmother, Nancy (Wilson) Ghent, survived three husbands—birthing children to each husband, and two cluster migrations— from her native South Carolina to Alabama, and second to Texas in her senior years, leaving several married children in Alabama. She also brought to Texas those recollections of both her father’s and grandparents’ American Revolution service.
Sallie descended from intrepid women. Her blind mother, Augusta, and maternal grandmother, Nancy, provided living role models to her. Their determination and forbearance propelled them through family births and deaths, challenges of living in frontier Alabama, and Civil War upheaval with spousal extended absence. And starting over after devastating loss.
Sallie became stepmother to Allie’s six living children of eight born from his first marriage to Mollie Hollingsworth. They ranged in age from 18-year old Fred to 6-year old Bertha. Sandwiched between were three pre-adolescent girls and one adolescent boy, all six still grieving for their mother who died but four months earlier.
Sallie’s two daughters from her first marriage to Columbus Heifner faced melding into the larger Brady bunch; they were roughly the ages of Allie’s two youngest daughters. Within the year, their first son was born. ‘Theirs’ eventually grew to total five sons and three daughters, including their double blessing, the twins Viola and Vivian, in 1890. Between his two marriages, Allie Brady fathered 16 children, 14 living to adulthood.
Sallie’s two daughters from her first marriage to Columbus Heifner faced melding into the larger Brady bunch; they were roughly the ages of Allie’s two youngest daughters. Within the year, their first son was born. ‘Theirs’ eventually grew to total five sons and three daughters, including their double blessing, the twins Viola and Vivian, in 1890. Between his two marriages, Allie Brady fathered 16 children, 14 living to adulthood.
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| Alfred “Allie” Edmund Brady 1844 (Aston, Birmingham, England) - 1922 (Texas) |
My paternal grandmother, Viola (Brady) Peel—beloved Biowa to her four granddaughters and their friends—was the first daughter born to Allie and Sallie. Viola adored her father, maintaining close familial connection to her parents and her full siblings throughout life as well as assorted descendants of her older half-siblings. After migrating to Dallas ca 1923, newspaper articles reveal Viola’s many return trips to the Brady homeland in the Brazos Bottoms of Texas for visits with her widowed mother and adult siblings.
It is both a privilege and honor to remain the caretaker of both Sallie’s spectacles case and Allie’s letter to her that initiated their marriage two months later. It has survived three major Brazos River floods and countless relocations since its 1884 composition.
A marriage borne of necessity,
Allie and Sallie’s marriage was a love match in the end.
Afterword:
Viola assigned her father’s first name as her only child’s middle name (Beverly Alfred Peel). Viola’s granddaughter, Sally, was named in memory of Viola’s mother (“Sallie”Brady).
Unknown is the number of Alfred Edmund Brady descendants who carry “Brady” as either their first or last name.
For the Family!
Beth Peel Leggieri, Heir Unapparent
Copyright © HeirUnapparent, 2020. All rights reserved.
Revised April 23, 2026
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