To the Point: Earhart's Prenuptial Letter to Putnam

Read a letter from Amelia Earhart to George Putnam before their marriage!

Jan 20, 2014

BY Dylan Hayley Leavitt

Appraisal: 1932 Amelia Earhart Pen & Pencil Set

Transcript

APPRAISER: You brought your husband's collection of about 500 pens.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: How did he amass so many pens?

GUEST: It was over probably 25, 30 years that he collected.

APPRAISER: Wow. One at a time. Well, I saw some wonderful pens, but I picked out these because they were very special. Can you tell me how your husband got these?

GUEST: My husband was made aware of the pens... Whoever it was that told him was interested in the pens themselves, but for some reason was not able to connect or follow through with it, so he said to my husband, "Why don't you look into it?" And so my husband did and ended up with the pens.

APPRAISER: Wonderful. Well, what makes these special is who the owners were and who they were gifted to.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: They are Waterman pens, a very famous company that began in 1884 who made high-quality writing instruments for many, many years. But these are extraordinary because these pens were a gift from Amelia Earhart to her husband of then one year, George. And it has a fantastic date on it, being May 20, 1932, and on May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart did something extraordinary: she set the record for the first solo female for a transatlantic flight. She took off from Newfoundland and she landed a little short of 15 hours later in Northern Ireland. We see "George Palmer Putnam" and "From Amelia Earhart Putnam" and the date. And what I love about these especially, the fountain pen out of the set, is we have this wonderful hand engraving of her plane here in the corner over the figure of Neptune, which is the god of the seas. She met George, who was a publisher at the time. He published the Charles Lindbergh book We and was looking for a woman aviator, and he certainly found one.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: He tried to propose to her six times before she finally accepted. Do you remember what your husband paid for this?

GUEST: I really don't remember. The figure that comes to my mind, and I don't know if it's about this pen or one of the others that he bought, was something approximately maybe $300, but I don't know for sure.

APPRAISER: Well, certainly 14 karat gold pens just from gold weight alone are going to be valuable, but because of the connection and the personal connection to Amelia Earhart, I feel that these pens on the secondary auction market would bring between $15,000 and $20,000.

GUEST: Oh my. (laughs) Then he got a good set of pens.

At the Boise, Idaho, appraisal event in 2013, the owner of two coveted writing instruments was in for a treat when she met expert Kathleen Guzman. The pen and pencil set belonged to the owner's husband, two pieces from a collection of 500 amassed over three decades.

He tried to propose to her six times before she finally accepted

Yet these two instruments in particular stood out to Kathleen because they bore inscriptions from Amelia Earhart. The set was made by Waterman, makers of high-quality writing instruments for many years. This particular set was a gift from Earhart to her husband George Palmer Putnam in 1932, after their first year of marriage.

"He tried to propose to her six times before she finally accepted," Guzman said. In the Purdue University archives, ANTIQUES ROADSHOW found a copy of the letter Earhart wrote to Putnam in 1931, before their marriage. "You must know my reluctance to marry," Earhart wrote, "my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means most to me."

Related Article: Amelia Earhart was a perfect specimen for celebrity

The letter shows how dedicated Earhart was to her career as a pilot. After all, she was planning to achieve the extraordinary in becoming the first female to complete a solo transatlantic flight in May of 1932. As a female adventurer in the early 1930s, Earhart clearly felt conflicted about her decision to wed Putnam, noting that she could not guarantee "to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage." More than the conventional cold feet of a bride-to-be, Earhart's letter exudes deep misgivings that marrying Putnam would mean surrendering her cherished independence and the chance to pursue her life's dreams. Her courage to communicate her fears so candidly to the man she had already agreed to marry is still stirring today.

Read the full letter in the Purdue University archives

Learn more about Amelia Earhart from AMERICAN EXPERIENCE