Transcription Challenge: Peter Hansen’s Letters

This challenge is complete!

The Marie Hansen Taylor Correspondence is one of the largest collections included in the project. Over many decades, Marie Hansen Taylor exchanged hundreds of letters with her mother, Lina Braun Hansen. In this challenge, we’re focusing on the smaller set of letters written by Marie Hansen Taylor’s father, Peter Hansen. You can help us learn more about how family members maintained their bonds across the Atlantic by transcribing their digitized letters. We’ve started off the transcription work with the first sentences of each letter. Check out the list below and follow the “Transcribe” link to start helping! If you are not yet a transcriber, sign up here.

Marie Hansen Taylor

Author Marie Hansen Taylor was born at Gotha, Thüringen, in 1829. She married American writer Bayard Taylor in October 1857. Over the following two decades, the couple traveled widely throughout the United States and Europe, spending extended periods in Taylor's home state of Pennsylvania and also in New York City. Throughout this period Marie Hansen Taylor carried on an extensive correspondence with her parents and other family members.

Peter Hansen

Astronomer Peter Hansen and his wife Lina Braun Hansen were the parents of Marie Hansen Taylor. Peter Hansen was born at Tondern, Schleswig (now Tønder, Denmark) in 1795 and married Lina Braun (born 1811), the daughter of a forest official, in 1829. The couple had three sons and four daughters, including Marie Hansen Taylor. He held a long-term appointment as head of the astronomical observatory sponsored by the duke of Saxe-Gotha, and it was from there that he wrote to his daughter. Peter Hansen died in 1874 and Lina Braun Hansen in 1889.