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To Jacob C. Nicholson, Baltimore. Concerning his wife –“my dear Unhappy Sister”– Susan, who had apparently left her husband, taking along their two youngest children. Plaintive words about an eccentric sister: “…truly distressed… dreadful situation … your great and sore troubles and trials…her imprudent deportment… wishes and desires…she was advised to go home and let those people alone, that were trying to break the peace of her family for their amusement, and make herself and family happy and let her children go to school and be well educated…and attend to her domestic duties…loving her home and family and living in peace…try and bear with her longer… she will be glad to go home after a while, it is all done to vex you, …that you may bring reproach on your character and standing…don’t take any public steps towards her yet, I think things will be better…this is for your special information, soon as you read it burn it, let none of the children, nor anyone see it…” (Full transcript on request). Though distinguished Museum Curator William R. Sargent wrote a youthful unpublished thesis about the early self-taught American woman artist, Susannah Fauntleroy Quarles Nicholson (1804-1858), her work is noted only in a 1984 Maryland exhibition catalogue, where she is described as "a member of a prominent aristocratic... wealthy and illustrious Virginia family...best known for her family portraits". Her apparently colorful life was kept a close secret by her siblings and children (one of whom became a US Congressman), beginning with a first “imprudent” teenage marriage to a poor Italian immigrant music teacher. Her second husband, Jacob Cannon Nicholson, was a fellow portrait painter, but despite that shared passion, this letter suggests that their story has yet to be chronicled.