Take home an old pillowcase and you never know what you'll discover. In the case of Mrs. Kathleen Caffee Dickinson, it was a treasure trove of letters exchanged between her grandfather, Henry Hilgrove Hollis, a local seafarer, and her grandmother, Louisa Jane Wilkinson Hollis, in the 1800s.

More than the abiding affection the couple held for each other, the letters gave a very detailed insight into life in Bailey's Bay during the middle of the last century.

For decades the letters had lain quietly in a drawer at Hilgrove, the gracious marital home of Henry Hilgrove and Louisa Jane Hollis and subsequently their daughter, Kit.

Upon Kit's death in 1949, the letters were discovered by her two sisters, Matilda and Louise, who separated them into two pillowcases. Matilda took hers back to the US, while Louise's remained with her in Bermuda.

Perhaps fearing that they were too personal, Matilda chose not to read her parents' letters, so they lay unopened in a drawer until 1960.

Upon her death, however, Matilda's daughter, Mrs. Kathleen Caffee Dickinson, had no such qualms. Stimulated by what she found, she began the laborious business of deciphering and transcribing the hundreds of letters and documents before finally preparing them for presentation to the Bermuda Archives.

During the process, she would receive the contents of the second pillowcase from Mrs. Amy Clendenen, Louise Hollis Outerbridge's daughter.

The real story begins, however, in the mid-19th century, where Henry Hilgrove Hollis and Louisa Jane Wilkinson grew up in Bailey's Bay. Six years separated their ages.

When Henry put to sea as a teenager, his mother, Mary Peach, organised an assortment of young people to write to him to assuage his loneliness. Among them was Louisa Jane. Although only 12 at the time, her words struck a chord with Henry, and in time the couple would fall in love.

What Henry proposed and Louisa accepted, her father adamantly rejected.

"Too young,'' the senior Mr. Wilkinson declared of his 16-year-old daughter.

Even though it was common for women to join their sailor husbands on voyages, Mr. Wilkinson knew what a rough life it was, particularly if what he called "the natural consequences of matrimony'' occurred, and he didn't want Louisa Jane to be so burdened so early in her life.

Nonetheless, in time the couple prevailed, were duly married, and for some years Louisa Jane viewed the world from the deck of her husband's vessel.

After the arrival of her third child, however, she took up residence in Bailey's Bay while her husband remained at sea. She would subsequently bear Henry four more children.

A steady stream of letters before and after their marriage chronicles the couple's mutual devotion, tribulations and adventures, as well as life in 18th century Bermuda.

As with today, there was gossip and tittle-tattle to relate, as well as humorous anecdotes, family news, deaths, births and more.

The lively exchange of letters, including ones between the father and his children, continued until Henry Hollis finally retired from the sea. Ashore, he became a Member of Parliament for Hamilton Parish and a civic worker.

Stowed in a drawer for decades, the intrinsic value of the Hollis letters was not immediately realised until granddaughter Kathleen began delving into the reams of prose.

Written in longhand on both sides of flimsy paper, and in such a way that every inch of space was used, including writing diagonally across horizontal lines, they offered a formidable challenge to any reader.

As a keen student of history, Mrs. Dickinson began the painstaking task of transcribing them in 1960.

"It has been a labour of love,'' her daughter, Mrs. Linda Dickinson Brown, admitted. "Mother doesn't type, so she originally began writing in longhand.

Then she bought herself a typewriter and, by the hunt-and-peck system, transcribed what she could. It was such a messy job, with lots of typos!'' So much so, in fact, that, although the two were living 70 miles apart in Florida, Mrs. Brown offered to take over the typing, and promptly became as hooked on the project as her mother.

"It showed me how important the past is to the present. I saw the letters in their true value to history,'' Mrs. Brown said.

She was further motivated by the way certain dates tied in.

"I am a Baha'i, and 1844 was not only the year when the Baha'i faith began but also when Louisa Wilkinson was born. And November 12, 1863 was the wedding date of Louisa and Henry Hollis as well as the birthday of Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i faith.'' Mrs. Brown estimated that she and her mother had transcribed some 700 letters and "probably 1200'' business documents by the time she travelled to Bermuda in November to present the entire collection to the Archives on her family's behalf.

"Mother had rheumatoid arthritis so badly that when I came to live with her in June 1992 she couldn't even sign her name easily,'' she recalled. "When we decided to give these items to the Bermuda Archives last August mother got so excited she would sit for eight hours a day preparing them.

"She took the fragile originals and put them in envelopes, on which she wrote the date of the letter, the writer and recipient, and a whole package of quotes from within it. She would pick out the most interesting bits and print volumes on the white envelope. She did this for almost the whole 700 letters.

We were working on them full time from August this year until November.'' Clearly proud of their achievement, Mrs. Brown said of the collection: "I think we will see that this batch of material is far deeper and more significant than any of us can possibly realise.'' Of her decision to return the prized treasures of her ancestral history to Bermuda, the US resident had no regrets.

"My philosophy is that they belong to the people of Bermuda and they always have. We just `borrowed' them for 30 years. This is their home, and on my trip to Bermuda I was able to bring them to a safe harbour. Why should I think I can hold this material, which doesn't belong to me, but to the great family of Bermuda? I really want Bermudians to know about this. It is their family record.

"People can go into the letters and find fertile food for their particular interest. We want them to be well farmed.'' Like most people who get deeply involved in researching and cataloguing the past, Mrs. Brown once envisaged writing a book about the letters. She even thought of a title: Opened Letters, Opened Lives, but has since changed her mind.

"At this point in my life I am unwilling to spend another 10-25 years doing the work that is necessary to publish a book,'' she declared. "I want to dedicate my remaining years to the future, not the past. As a Baha'i, I see myself as having a role in helping to bring about world peace, and I must be about that business.'' Nonetheless, she hopes that someone will come along to write the book -- in collaboration with her.

And how does Mrs. Dickinson feel now that her work is done? "Mother is excited,'' Mrs. Brown assured. "How many people get to tie the bow on their life, which is what she did when she finished this job? At the age of 87 she can now say: `I did it, and I did it well'. This is her gift to Bermuda.'' PRESENTING A SLICE OF HISTORY -- Mrs. Linda Dickinson Brown, a great granddaughter of Henry Hilgrove and Louisa Jane Hollis, shows off the inherited 93-year-old dress she wears when addressing gatherings on the history of her Bermudian ancestors. A US resident, Mrs. Brown was recently in Bermuda to present her great grandparents' collection of personal letters to the Archives.