Before She Was a Dollar Princess: A Father’s Letters to His American Heiress

There is a particular kind of letter that never makes it into history books. It isn’t written to impress, or to record an event of national importance, or to be quoted solemnly decades later. It is written simply because someone is missed. In the Alberta Sturges archive — thousands of letters deep — there is one such letter, written in Chicago in 1878, and signed by an American heiress who was just six months old. Or rather, signed for her. It is playful, affectionate, faintly ridiculous, and so unbearably tender that it feels less like a document and more like a small, preserved heartbeat. Alberta would later become what society liked to call a Dollar Princess. But long before titles, marriages, or expectations, she was first — and fiercely — her father’s adored child.

Nearly 150 years later, that letter still exists.

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To mark the New Year, I’m offering 20% off an annual subscription — a small thank-you, and a rather lovely way to step further into the archive. I’d be so glad to have you join us.