Something random for a cold cold day

In his 1858 book, A History of Middle Tennessee, historian A.W. Putnam invented an oft-repeated myth:  namely, that the first permanent settlement of Nashville came on Christmas day, 1779 when a large party crossed the frozen Cumberland River near the present-day downtown.

 I'm looking at this stuff because of this...

The 2 photos above are of one of several letters given to me by my grandmother, Odene Biffle.  They were written to her grandfather, Mr. James Sneed, by his brother in Henrico County, Virginia.  In case you can't tell, the bottom photo shows the letter was being sent to:   Mr. James Sneed, Tenefee State Near Nafhvile (sic).  In the top picture you can see it was written January 20th, 1802, or three years after that historic--and mythical--river crossing.   I've been looking into these letters--which I've had for a quite a while--because I finally decided to do something with them.

What I've done, by the way, is to finally carefully unfold them and preserve them between pieces of glass framed by some old recovered heart pine (probably of the same age as the letter!).  I gave one of them to my sister as a Christmas present.  I'd like to tell you I've researched proper archival techniques for such historic documents (the state of Tennessee has in it's archive a collection called "The Sneed Family Letters" which is said to be one of the most complete collections of early Tennessee historic information available).  I'd like to tell you I used archival glass.  UV protected and stuff.  Or sealed the frame properly to keep it from harmful air exposure.  I haven't done any of that, but hey, these things are 200 years old and I've been toting them around for a decade in an old shoe box.  Hopefully they'll hang in there until I can do it right...

Anyway...

The fun part (for me at least) about this is all the random connections.  It's cold here in Charleston today.  Really, really cold.  It got down to 19 degrees F.  My pipes in the warehouse froze.  It happens to be a little after Christmas, just like in that cold cold story of the river crossing.  The letter itself actually mentions news of yet another Sneed brother and how he was getting along with his business dealings in Beaufort and Charleston, South Carolina--and hey! I live in Charleston now!  And finally, one more odd connection is that in looking at all this historic stuff I found another mention of a progenitor as it pertains to the veracity of our aforementioned historian, A. W. Putnam.  It is as follows:
Yet another historian, Judge John Haywood, wrote in his 1823 book A Civil and Political History of Tennessee that he got "much information from frontiersman John Raines, who actually came across the ice" and Raines mentioned nothing of a Christmas crossing.  The connection is...tah dah:  My grandmother's grandfather on the other side was John Raines.  

Pretty cool, huh?  Or should I say cold?