This collection consists of over 230 items, almost all of which are letters. Mary S. Clayton wrote most of the letters to her future husband, James F. Jordan, while she worked as a schoolteacher in Almont, Michigan. Mary began her correspondence in July 1877, shortly after graduating from the Michigan State Normal School, and regularly wrote flirtatious letters to James, also a teacher. She focused on her teaching career and life in Almont, Michigan, and described incidents from the classroom as well as from her social life. She mentioned the Methodist Church, where she occasionally taught classes, local news, and her thoughts on relationships, particularly on flirtation. She wrote most of the letters prior to her marriage to James in 1881. The rest include letters that James wrote to Mary from Buchanan, Michigan, in 1882, as well as letters from family and friends, who wrote from several Michigan towns and from Chicago. Some later letters relate to the custody of Mary's sister Libbie following the death of her father in the spring of 1882.
Mary S. Clayton was born in Wayne County, Michigan, on January 19, 1857, the daughter of Joseph S. Clayton and his wife Mary. She had four siblings: Frederick, Cornelia, Margaret, and Elizabeth ("Libbie"). Clayton graduated from the Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University) in 1877, with a focus in modern languages, and moved to Almont, Michigan, where she became a teacher at Union School. In the late summer of 1881, she married James F. Jordan, a native of Decatur, Michigan, who also graduated from the Michigan State Normal School in 1877. They lived in Lawton, Michigan, where he worked as a teacher, and eventually moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he worked as a "credit man." They had at least five children: Lois, Anna, Robert James, Frances, and Veda.
