The Jewell McCarn Letters primarily contain correspondence sent by Jewell “Julie” McCarn (later Lavers) of Baltimore to David Park Reaves II of Salisbury in the summer of 1946. McCarn recounts her day to day activities, including her job as a typist for the Glenn L. Martin Company, sewing, travel, and shopping as well as her recent engagement to the recipient, David Reaves.

David Park Reaves II was born in Buffalo, New York in 1925. By the 1940s, he was living in Salisbury, Maryland. Jewell McCarn was born in North Carolina in 1926, and was living and attending school in Baltimore, Maryland in 1946. At the time, she was in the processes of rushing the sorority Alpha Delta Phi and was a majorette for her college’s marching band. The pair got engaged in May of 1946 and married in Baltimore on September 6th, 1947.

By 1950, David and Jewell moved to Gainesville, Florida, where David was working as a draftsman for the county surveyor. The Reaves had five children after 1950, before they divorced at some point in the early-to-mid 1960s. David passed away in 1978 after a fruitful career as an architect. Jewell remarried Charles H. Lavers in the mid-to-late 1960s, who she stayed with until she passed away in Huntsville, Alabama in 1990.

The majority of this collection consists of letters that Jewell McCarn sent to David Reaves between June 15 and September 11, 1946. The final folder, Ephemra, contains an undated photograph of McCarn and an associate in their majorette uniforms, undated notes, as well as an insurance letter addressed to David Reaves from 1955. The letters primarily recount McCarn’s day to day activities: she discusses attending movies, socializing, family, her job, and plans for their future. She often describes her sewing and patternmaking, including sketches of her sewing and a fabric sample.

These letters are arranged in chronological order, following the original arrangement.