Woman Discovers Great-Great-Grandfather's Love Letter From 1890

A Colorado woman has shared the contents of a love letter her great-great-grandfather wrote more than a century ago.

When it comes to romantic relationships, words are simply not enough anymore. In a 2022 YouGov poll, 1,000 U.S. adults were asked to rank the five "love languages": quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service and gift giving.

Quality time (38 percent) and physical touch (24 percent) ranked as the most preferred choices, with words of affirmation in third place (19 percent), just ahead of acts of service and gift giving.

But words can still be powerful, and there was a time when the written word played a huge role in finding a romantic relationship, as Angela Nauss knows very well.

A few months ago, while she was sorting through her 97-year-old grandmother's things at her San Francisco house, she stumbled upon a box of papers containing a letter dated August 5, 1890, from her great-great-grandfather Salvatore Ciucci of Lucca, Italy, to his future wife and her great-great-grandmother, Anna Murphy.

"The letter is the most romantic thing I've ever read," Nauss told Newsweek. "My Italian tutor says that men from Lucca are known for being unemotional tightwads, so it is possible that we are dealing with amorous emotion below the Italian average."

She reckons the letter may have sat unread for half a century.

The letter, which Salvatore wrote despite having an extremely limited understanding of English, begins: "I take a great pleasure in write to you to let you know that I like going tonight if you coming if you like to coming."

He continues later in the letter: "I wait for you on the same corner of [illegible] at nine o'clock, I hope do not to be disappointed." The letter closes with the line: "Goodbye dear Anna love me forever and received a kiss from Salvatore."

Reading the letter in her grandmother's home was a poignant experience for Nauss. Just a few months earlier, her grandfather had died, and her grandmother was no longer able to look after herself at home. The letter made her think of them.

"When I first read the letter, I thought about the love that my grandparents shared for the last 30 years until my grandfather passed away," she said. "My favorite line is the last one when he says 'received a kiss from Salvatore.'"

Nauss found a veritable treasure trove of mementos her grandmother had kept, which chronicle her family's history over the past 120 years.

"I found Salvatore Ciucci's 1890 visa from King Umberto I, giving him permission to travel to San Francisco," she said. "I found his passport with stamps from Lucca, where he grew up; the port of Livorno, where he left Italy; and the United States. I also found his naturalization paperwork from 1893, when he became a citizen."

Though his grasp of written English was limited, Nauss reckons her great-great-grandfather must have been "charming" in person because he and Anna ended up married and had children.

"They had four children together," she said. "The oldest, Harold Ciucci, died of Spanish flu in WW I. I looked up his military card and found records of his commanding officer reporting Harold as sick in the hospital. Shortly after, he died. We have his letters from traveling to France. Other paperwork includes a letter from his commanding officer and a certificate of death signed by General Pershing."

Eager to share her discovery, Nauss posted a video detailing the letter to TikTok under the handle kira kingsley history.

"I wanted to share the TikTok video to inspire people to acknowledge the love they share with others. Someday you will be gone, but your love will last forever," she said. "Who knows, maybe your great-granddaughter will find one of your letters."

She said "internet sleuths" have been busy trying to work out the exact street where Anna and Salvatore may have met.

"He marked in the letter that she should stand on the corner of 'b' if she does not want to see him anymore, and 'p', if she would like to see him," Nauss said. "We've been looking at old maps of the city. There are several streets with those letters that intersect. I'm hoping to find a landmark, like a park or a church, to suggest points of interest."

Words might not mean as much in romance today, but they are helping Nauss piece together a long-lost part of her family's history that her grandmother has long cherished.