In 1910 Orville worked at the Colorado Agriculture Experiment Station as an assistant in entomology. Here he conducted Syrphidae studies, plant lice studies, and inspection training, among numerous other tasks. Orville Babcock graduated in 1910 with a B.S. degree in Entomology and Horticulture.
Professor C.P. Gillette was head of the Entomological Department and S. Arthur Johnson was the Associate Professor, and he was responsible for getting Orville his first job under Professor T.B. Symons at Maryland Agricultural College. He was a professor of entomology and did research work in botany.
The following are three love letters Orville wrote to Edith from Maryland.
Orville wrote the following to Edith dated August 21, 1910, after having recently arrived in Riverdale, Maryland.
Riverdale, Md 8-21-10
My Dear Edith,
O for a companion. Maryland is not what I thought it was. Well dearest I will first tell you about my trip and then I will tell you how lonesome I am.
I changed my mind and went by way of Chicago instead of St. Louis and I am glad of it. I left Denver at 9:45 p.m. and woke up in Kansas. I would hate to live in Kansas and so would you. The country is so level and dry. I stopped in Lincoln, Nebraska for ten minutes. It is a good sized city but did not strike me as an attractive place to live. Iowa is a pretty state especially in the hilly country and Ohio is a beautiful state. Lots of trees and flowers and shrubs, but I do detest large cities. Fort Collins or smaller is about right.
Chicago is a very large city. Denver isn’t in it in size. It would almost take an expert to get heads or tails out of Chicago. In some places there is a street, above it a railroad track and above that a street-car track. What do you think of that? Excuse me. Shortly after I left Chicago, I rode near by Lake Michigan and O but that was a beautiful sight. The air smelt so cool and fresh. I wanted to stop right there but I couldent I wouldent mind being at the Michigan College would you Dearest. I saw the canal and the canal boats, it was well worth seeing but the H2O. O! My, it was so dirty, dirty. Whenever a boat was ready to leave town, the bridges would suddenly separate in the middle and stand up on its two ends while the canal boat would pass by. Illinois is a pretty state, but I don’t know whether I would like to live in it or not.
I traveled for a short distance in West Virginia. The Allegheny Mountains was a complete disappointment. They are nothing but foothills covered with dense forest. I don’t believe any of them are much higher than the red sandstone mountains near Bellvue, Colorado. The Potomac River is dirty and so level that it looks like a lake, even in the mountains, and there are not even any rapids. After traveling for 3 nights and 2 ½ days, I arrived in the city of Washington only to be almost dumfounded but after spending 90 cents more I found my way to College Park, a distance of 8 miles from D.C. When I bring you back with me next summer, we will not look at the B&O because it is the dirtiest R.R. I ever saw. The train simply flicks up the fine dirt and throws it in at the car windows. I still have $65 left out of the $75 I brought with me, and I tell you I will be glad when I can pay it back to Murdoch Nelson. So far it has not been very hot in Maryland, but it feels hotter because the air is so full of moisture that the perspiration will not evaporate. Don’t say anythat to your chums at college about me being dissatisfied but I am. The college is not a coeducational institution. Only boys go to college here and in fact it is a strictly military school. The students have to board and room at the college, go to bed at 10 o’clock and get up at 6 a.m. and during all this time they are under strict military rules. Owing to the fact the students are all male the moral standing is not so high and all of the bug men smoke so you can see how pleasant it will be for me this winter. The horticultural men are all straight and strange to say they are all Babtist, therefore there is when I am going to church. I want to hold this job for just 12 months, just long enough so that you can see the east and enough of it to appreciate the west. Believe me, the very first chance I get to accept a position out west, it won’t take me 5 minutes to accept the opportunity. O! Edith dearest it is a good thing you didn’t come with me because there is not a vacant house anywhere and I had an awful time to get a place to board and room. But I do wish you was here for you are the only companion I have.
The niggers are as thick as the hair on a dog’s back and dirty as hogs, most of them, and when they sweat I can’t bear the smell. I used to have a lot of sympathy for them but not so much now. It is a funny thing, but the niggers all have to ride in nigger sections of trains and yet in town there will be a house full of niggers another house of white people. Nigger, white, nigger, white. They do about a half day’s work and are lazy.
Well dearest the only companion I have are the two pictures of you upon the bureau in my room. I wish I was in Wyoming, don’t you dearest. I know we would be happier there. If I had known what I know now, I would of brought only half of the stuff with me that I did, but I will do the best I can and get out as soon as I can. I was out to a large nursery yesterday and on Tuesday I leave for S.E. Maryland 6 miles from the ocean and will be gone for a week. The nursery has over 500 acres of nursery stock in it.
How are you feeling Dearest? Please write soon and tell me all the news You stay in college this year and study music and whenever you need any money, please write to me at once and let me know. Tell the folks I said hello.
My address is
O.G. Babcock
College Park, Maryland
c/o Science Hall
O! Edith Dearest I was never homesick in my life, but I do feel lonesome. I have a longing for dear old Colorado. O! well Dearest the coming 9 months will be lonely, but I guess I will have to stand it. I wish a month was only two weeks instead of one. Dearest I must say good by until I hear from you again. I feel just like I did when you left me at the depot. My tears come anyhow. It just broke me up to see you go away. Please write soon, won’t you dearest? Your lover, Orville
*One comment regarding the use of the word ‘nigger’ on the first page of Orville’s letter dated August 21, 1910. According to his daughter, Edith May, she never heard this word spoken by either of her parents while growing up. In fact, she told the story of visiting a friend’s home in Sonora whose father used the “n” word. Edith May corrected the man and said, “We NEVER say that word in our house.” It should be assumed that after Orville realized this was a derogatory term, he ceased using it.
Orville wrote the following to Edith on October 30, 1910, in a ten-page letter from Riverdale, Maryland (Only page one is attached.).
Riverdale, Md 10-30-10
My Dear Edith:
O Edith, why can’t you be here with me, it is so lonesome to be by myself. After traveling and teaching all week I feel like going out somewhere to day to enjoy myself but alas there is no pleasure for me to be by myself any more. It was the other way before I met you but now, I have changed. I have not seen the capitol of the U.S. Government yet and yet it is only seven miles away from Riverdale; nor have I seen the Washington monument and other buildings. I haven’t visited any parks in Washington either but what is the use. I get more enjoyment out of my room and what I have in I than I do of anything else.
After I travel from two to three days a week all by myself. I don’t care to do it again on Sunday. When you are with me we will visit all of the Government buildings and pleasure resorts, park, etc of Washington for I can then enjoy it. Love and companionship is what I want and I can’t get it here.
I guess all of the green leaves will turn now because there was a change in the weather last night and it froze an inch of ice last night. The woods are certainly pretty now and that is all that is pretty in Maryland except the ocean and its contents. I saw something when I was in Westminster last Monday and Tuesday, what do you think it was? Well, it was this: in some of the old homes were to be found some of the old fashioned great big wooden pumps with wooden fossets (faucets), just like some of the fixtures one sees in some of the storybooks for children. Westminster is a pretty little town, I should say from 3000 to 5000 inhabitants and a lot of homes that resemble those of the west.
I will agree with you that it is an every Sunday’s occurrence to write a letter, but I enjoy it because I know that you will be expecting a letter on Thursday afternoon just the same time that I expect yours until Thursday evening at 5:45 p.m.
I am well acquainted with the woods about Riverdale and College Park, MD and I most always enjoy taking a walk through them when coming home from college. You see I walk home. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in the woods and gathered quite a number of pretty fungus growths and I am sending you one of the most peculiar forms that I ever saw. It is hard and woody and looks dead but it isent (isn’t). I would like to know the name of it so if you will take it over to Prof. Longyear (Burton Longyear was head of Forestry Department at the College.) I think he can tell you. If you feel a bit bashful you needent do it. Ha! ha! ha!
I see now where you have got the laugh on me. I sent you some acorns because they were pretty and I thought you would enjoy them and I also saved some for myself, but lo and behold I have now got a lot of bugs from them. They are the larva of a beetle. If I had only known it before.
O Edith I feel a hundred times more like talking to you than writing but as I can’t talk I will have to write and content myself with that until I meet you.
Now look here, don’t you know you are the wife of a zoologist and a botanist, the very idea of you calling me a “silly boy”. Ha! ha! ha! Well Dearest I was foolish but I was innocent at first but Prof. Johnson kindly hinted or rather told me to be careful about sending live snakes through the mail. It is forbidden but preserved specimens properly packed can be sent so please don’t say too much about how they got there. The turtle however I sent by express (collect).
I won’t get my check until some time next week but I will send you $10 this week because you may need it and I will send $5 more next Sunday. I won’t be able to pay every cent of my debt this time because I have used up so much for traveling expenses and won’t get it back for a month yet, otherwise I could pay my debt next week. When you get this letter please inform me if you got the $10 all O.K.
Night Shirt Parade Ha! ha! ha! I remember back 5 and 6 years ago when J.W. Ayres, “Teddy” Urbham, many others and myself had seven night shirt parades. We certainly had grand times then. We used to get the rifles and shoot them and O. My.
Thank you ever so much for the college papers. I didn’t go to bed until midnight last night on account of them. I saw your name imprint in several places. Gee but that automobile ride must have been great and say you must have been doing things to have all of that said about you. Those poems are great.
Never mind about the Holly leaf I am going to make my students study it next week. Let us go out for a walk in the woods this afternoon and gather Holly and Love and Love and Love and Pleasure. Come on, the sun is bright, the air is warm, and the woods are pretty. You spoke about the osteopath doctor. I can’t afford anything extra until possibly next month but as soon as you can spare a couple of dollars go and see her once anyhow and then you may know whether she can really help you or not. I am glad you feel better now than you did in September. Don’t work too hard. I want you to gain strength and health above all things. Thank you ever so much for promising to play for me the very best you can next summer, but I won’t make any promises until next summer. You know how much I care for you.
Edith Dear, don’t send any more Collegian because I am going to subscribe for it. I don’t care to spend the dollar for it but you see I’m an alumnus and I have got to do so for one or two years at best.
Did I tell you about the marbled steps, well her goes, in Baltimore there are blocks and blocks, and blocks, of houses all of which look exactly alike, and all have steps made of marble. They are pretty but barren, ______________, just like living, well I don’t know where, I don’t see any pleasure in city life. Baltimore is certainly a funny city, when I left Baltimore on the Western Maryland R.R. I had another ride under the city in a tunnel but never mind you will have the same experience next summer won’t you Dearest. Yes, please. It is certainly a pretty country along the Western Maryland R.R. The land is rolling and in fact hilly and for the first time I saw laborers in the cornfield husking corn and husking corn, and corn and corn. While inspecting orchards I came across some peculiar scene, one was an old Bohemian and his wife husking corn and the other were the large cherry trees. I am not joking but these cherry trees were at least 14 to 16 inches in diameter. What do you think of that for a cherry tree.
Just think of it, tomorrow is November, maybe I had better say tomorrow will be November 4th when you read this letter. I wish this was May first don’t you Dearest. I will be in Baltimore tomorrow.
I hate to close but must. Good night dearest.
With truest love,
Yours ~ Orville
The third letter was written to Edith the following year on November 26, 1911. One can read between the lines of their growing love. He writes with eager anticipation of their upcoming marriage.
Riverdale, Md 11-26-11
Dear Love:
Last week in November at last. You did not tell me in your last letter where to send this letter, however I am sending it to Berthoud because I know you will be home at Thanksgiving time.
Well Dearest you gave me a hard subject to look up or rather, to get clippings of namely cotton, linen, jute, silk, wool, flax, hemp, etc. If you had asked mt two years ago I could have given you a nice set of pictures in flax, but I destroyed them many months ago. I think that next week I may be able to send you 2 or 3 fibers of six different plants by mail, but I have no information on the subject myself. I could give orally the microscopy now but I can’t find any clippings. Corn and rice fibers are used for paper, but I suppose you only want what is made over into cloth. I can say this much, I bought my first suit of wooly underwear and ouch, it itches.
Let us go out for a walk. It is such a beautiful afternoon, just like an early day in spring in Colorado. The fall in the east is like Colorado’s springs going backwards. Dearest, did you get my last letter all right and the money order and say, did you buy the trunk? Was you able to get a size like mine! The next thing is to get a suit case I sent Dearest and then, best of all – get married. Let us get married on the 26th of January 1912. Oh, by the way I think I have some good news to tell you. Prof. Symons told me last night that maybe I could have from the 15th of January to the 15th of February and if so, it will suit me a whole lot better.
The Horticulturist and Pathologist slipped one over on Symons, they only put in six lectures in entomology and all of the rest of the two weeks will be Hort. and Plant Pathology. This is why I may be able to take my vacation from Jan 15 to Feb 15th. Won’t that be fine, we can then rest easy at our new home and take in all sights in Washington and the ocean, and possibly the Caverns of Luray in Virginia, Baltimore and even New York that is if you wish to spend that much money. Of course, all of this is providing we get married in the east.
Just two months more to write. I wish the days were 12 hours long instead of 24 until January 26. Don’t you, Dearie. Gee, I wish I could have seen you dressed up at that entertainment at Guggenheim Hall. I am sure you girls had a fine time. The Collegian comes to me now, but the newspaper article was the best. Yes, Edith Dear there is coming a time when you will not have to work every minute. I want you to help me and love and I want you to love that is I love you and support you and care for you as a husband should. Will January ever come. Ha! ha! ha! ha! still bringing up church matters. I don’t care nothing about quarreling and scraffing about church affairs all the time, but I believe I would rather join a “German Reform”, “Congregational”, “Plymouth Congregational” or Universalist than a Methodist, Baptist, Christian or Presbyterian, but I will not join a Catholic, Episcopalian, Christian Science, or Spiritualist, however demand this much, and that is we belong to the same whatever it may be. So much for church fussing as I do not quarrel over religion any more.
Yes, Edith Dear if I run across anything about textiles that I can get I will send it to you. You did not tell me anything of the good times you had Miss Corbuts entertainment. I would surely like to visit Philo for a change and see the new meeting place, etc. What was that entertainment of Pref. houses in the Chapel one Tuesday morning not long ago? If you get married in east, you can take in the lecture course or else I will go west to you. Ha! ha! You can only attend two lectures. Take them in and then go home, after which you will come to Maryland won’t you Dearest. You had better save the Collegians as I am throwing them away.
Sunday evening 10:30 p.m. I finished (or though I did) your letter at 5 p.m. but I will now add a little more to it. I attended my church this evening and how I did miss you. It was such a good sermon, too. In his sermon was a statement thus, “Marry with a stubborn will and life is a drudgery, marry with love and live in happiness” We will marry with the handle of Love won’t we, Edith Dear. Yes Dearest, you and I will come back way and meet in the Congregational Church. Yes, Dear.
O how I do miss you, words cannot tell. If you could finish by Christmas I would surely have you here where I could love you to my heart’s desire. Just think of it, two long months to write, O why does the time go so slow.
Lovingly yours,
Orville