My Ancestors (27a) – Clara Maria de los Dolores Marina de Beck Guion – Clara’s Letter – 1893

The following is a letter written by Clara Maria de los Dolores Marina de Beck to Amelia Bowden Guion of Seneca Falls, New York in 1883:

“My grand-parents on my mother’s side were of royal descent. My grandfather Cadoret was guillotined in France for his loyalty to Marie Antoinette. My grandmother with her three daughters (my mother being the youngest) were secluded for months in a tower outside Paris and were released by being let down in the dead of night in a Cracker Barrel. This was suitably curtained inside and slightly ventilated, and with my grandmother inside was taken as freight on board a ship bound for Havana. My grandmother was of Spanish birth and it was deemed safer to send her to Cuba, than to Spain, as she might have been traced, and her head would have gone too. Of course they were rescued by friends, and when…