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Show Chapter 13 LETTERS TO LADYBIRD Documentation of the later life of Ellis Reynolds Shipp is scant. There are newspaper clippings marking birthdays and special events of her final decade. Beyond that, a collection of letters (manuscript originals) written to her youngest daughter, Nellie, over a seventeen-year period is about all that is presently available. They do, however, provide a wealth of information about the mature, the private Ellis. Nellie, known to her mother as Ladybird, was Ellis's tenth and last child. Her mother was forty-two at her birth, had previously lost a six-month-old boy, then another boy two years later, on the very day he was born. When Nellie arrived four and a half years after that, she was separated from her youngest living sibling, her sister Ellis, by ten years. She was also the last child of Milford Bard Shipp. These considerations can offer important clues as to why Ellis and this daughter were so closely bound together, though it must be remembered that Ellis valued all of her children above anything on earth. Her desire to supply their needs (spiritually, emotionally, financially) provided the motivation for much of what she did throughout her long life. Another daughter, Ellis Musser, verified this in a tribute to her mother, which we have previously alluded |