James/Flint/Thrall Family Letters

What would you give to spend a day with your great-grandparents? Or with a great-great grandmother? See them pinching pennies, sharing chores, managing money, traveling by buggy and railroad, dealing with diseases and doctors, supporting and joking with one another?
We can't exactly do that, but we do have perhaps the next best thing: 106 letters and fragments written by various members of the Flint and Thrall families of southern Illinois¿most of them to or from Edith (Flint) Thrall (1845-1898) and her husband Rev. Leonidas Thrall (1850-1918), their five children, and a few others, between 1870 and 1898. She was the first woman to graduate from the college after attending classes there. Four of their five children became active Methodists; the fifth became a well-loved professor of English literature at the University of North Carolina.