In Ella, Lee met his match. She was just as crazy in love with him as he was with her.

Here is Ella's letter responding to Lee's:

Mahl, Texas
Dec. 5, 1911
Mr. Lee Cunningham

Dear Sweet, I __ our your most kind and welcome letter I received same few days ago was indeed glad to here from you.
Say, how are you to day? I am all ____ hope you the same. Say how did you enjoy your self Sunday?

["Ela sweet hart" at top of page]
I just enjoyed myself fine. Say aint you just joking about losing sleep? I believe you are. Say you need not to be uneasy for you are the only [one] that I care for or ever will. I think of you all the time. You are never out of my mind.

Say if you care for me as I do you every thing will be all right.
["be a Good Boy" at top of page]

Say you need not to be uneasy about me letting other people read your letters for that something I don't do. Say has any one told you they read your letters if they did they told something that wasn't so.
["Don't forget me" at top of page]

Say hurry up and get through picking cotton but don't work too hard ha ha. Say sweet hart Lisen here I am going to tell you something sweet. I love you. God noes I do. I am telling you the truth. God noes I am.
["Be true" is at top of page]

Well as I am expecting to see you Sunday I won't write much this time hopping to hear from you real soon,
With love and best wishes. I will say good by. Your gradest old friend—Ella Seelbach
P.S. Dogs in the clabber/ Cats in the whey/ If you want to marry/ Come over this way. Can you beat this one?

But for the woman who wrote: Say if you care for me as I do you every thing will be all right--
fate had no mercy. And Ella learned that love does not protect us from what can harm us.

Lee and Ella married and had four children, but in 1923 Lee was murdered by a neighbor –right in the front yard. At the time, Ella had four children with Lee, including an eighteen-month old boy. She was alone and quickly depressed and erratic. Her father had her committed to Rusk State Mental Institution when she was thirty-three. She would live there for the next forty-three years. She would never come home again. Her children moved in with her husband's mother, Granny Hogan–a mean-spirited woman. The children born of two great lovers would not grow up in a loving home.

Ella was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Her sister, two first-cousins, a niece, and her grandson all spent time in Rusk State Mental Institution for related disorders. Paranoid schizophrenia is a chemical imbalance in the brain which can run in families. Perhaps it was prevalent for the Seelbachs because two families had married quite a bit between them. Ella's parents were in fact first cousins. Both families had immigrated to America from Prussia not knowing anyone or speaking English, so it only makes sense that they might find partners among themselves. Regardless, medication exists today for the condition. Ella was a victim of the era to which she was born.

The double marker for Lee and Ella presents the best end one could make of such tragedy--the hope that they are somehow--somewhere--still living the life they imagined in those love letters.

(A Recollection--M.E. McWilliams, her great granddaughter)