Watch: Minneapolis couple remodeling bathroom find decades-old love letters
Feb. 12 (UPI) -- A Minneapolis couple remodeling their bathroom made a surprising discovery behind a wall -- a pair of love letters that could be nearly a century old.
Matt and Carrie Tessmer said they found numerous treasures inside the wall behind the toilet, including containers for medicines, glycerin, rose water, razor blades and some Minneapolis-made toiletries from long-defunct brands.
The couple said the most exciting discovery was a pair of love letters that appeared to have both been written by the same teenager to two different girls.
The letters, signed "John B.," also known as "Lolly," were addressed to "Hazel" and "Pauline."
Both letters featured John B. declaring his love and devotion and asking each girl in turn to attend a dance with him.
"Upon reading some of them we realized it was actually probably more likely a kid like between the ages of 13-18," Carrie Tessmer told WCCO-TV. "They were talking about first lunch, 'I have study hall this period.'"
The couple said they have not yet identified John B., but they have identified a couple of suspects.
John Pavlo, the home's original owner, lived at the house with his family from the 1920s until the 1950s, and he had a son who was also named John.
"John Joseph Pavlo would have been about 17 at the time when he lived in this house with his family," Carrie Tessmer said.
The second suspect is John Book, who was born in the 1930s but was an adult when he moved into the house in the 1960s. The Tessmers said they found some of John Book's old homework in the attic, indicating he held onto some mementos of his teenage years.
"I would love to know the story behind it and also why the letters did not get delivered and why they ended up in our bathroom wall," Carrie Tessmer said.
A New York couple made a similar discovery behind a wall and were able to track down the author's daughter last year.
Dottie Kearney, 51, said she and her husband were tearing out old walls from the Staten Island fixer-upper they bought in the 1990s when they found a stash of letters written by World War II soldier Claude Smythe to his wife, Marie Smythe.
Kearney, with the help of TikTok "heirloom investigator" Chelsea Brown and genealogy website MyHeritage.com, was able to give the letters to the Smythes' daughter, Carol Bohlin, who now lives in Vermont.
