During a home renovation project, a couple discovered multiple long-lost love letters hidden inside their bathroom walls in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Valentine’s Day may be past us in 2024, but this love story uncovered by two homeowners still remains in my mind.
How did homeowners find long-lost love letters?
CBS News reported that the couple found these long-lost love letters after they decided in November 2020 to renovate the restroom inside their “more than a century-old home.”
After reportedly peeling back various layers of paint and plaster behind the toilet, the couple discovered the treasures preserved from a completely different time.
The couple, Matt and Carrie Tessmer, found “numerous treasures” inside the wall they broke down behind the toilet, “including containers for medicines, glycerin, rose water, razor blades and some Minneapolis-made toiletries from long-defunct brands.”
Carrie Tessmer said, “It’s truly a mystery how any of this stuff made it into our wall.”
Inspire More reported that most interesting thing they found behind the wall were love letters that were written to two different girls by the same man.
What did the long-lost love letters say?
CBS News reported that both love letters written to the two separate women named Pauline and Hazel making the “same request” asking them both to a dance.
Carrie Tessmer reportedly said when she first saw the note she questioned herself saying, “Am I reading this correctly?”
“Upon reading some of them we realized it was actually probably more likely a kid like between the ages of 13-18,” Carrie Tessmer said. “They were talking about first lunch, ‘I have a study hall this period.’”
UPI News reported that the young man who signed the letters was a “John B,” and while they have not identified him, they have identified a John Pavlo, who lived at the house with his family from the 1920s until the 1950s with a son who’s name was also John.
Following some further research on John Pavlo and a John Book, who was born in the 1930s and “bought the house decades later as an adult,” Carrie Tessmer said these artifacts are even more of a mystery.
“It’s even more of a mystery because we don’t know if it was written by John Pavlo as a 17-year-old in the ’20s, or if it was written by John Book when he was a kid and he just threw it in the walls when he bought the house in the ’60s,’” Carrie Tessmer said while reportedly emphasizing her and her husband’s resolve to continue trying to figure out who “John B” is.