Old Letters Update #2 - Many More Missing Than We Thought

I've written before about the many old letters that we are lucky enough to have in our possession and about the ones we know are now missing.  For those who missed the posts, they are HERE and HERE.

Anyway, I finally got around to going through the pile of empty envelopes that have been in my "To Do" box for ages.  I discovered that there are 241 envelopes ranging in postmarks from June 1876 to May 1926.  I had always assumed that they went with the letters we have.

241 empty envelopes!

Today, I tried to match the envelopes to the letters and discovered that they don't match.

So, that means that there are 241 letters that the family USED to have that are no longer in our possession.

So the mystery of what happened to the missing letters just got even bigger.  WHY did my husband's grandmother keep some of the letters and get rid of the others?  She apparently kept the envelopes because she thought the stamps might be valuable.  To me, the envelopes and stamps are just a frustrating, tantalizing reminder of all the family history that is lost to us because the letters are gone.