Old Lyme ― It took less than a day for letters from young Charley Chadwick to be borne by packet ship from the end of Ferry Road to his father in Brooklyn, N.Y.

It took the better part of a century and a half for the notes, written as part of Charley’s daily penmanship practice and numbering in the dozens, to reemerge as the basis for a children’s book chronicling the unique experience of one Victorian boy summering on the banks of the Connecticut River.

“Letters to Papa: Summers in Old Lyme” was published this month by the Old Lyme Historical Society. Alison Mitchell, a founder of the society in 2005, wrote the text. Member Edie Twining drew on her experience as a published storybook writer and illustrator to come up with the pictures.

Illustrations in the book evoke Charley’s sprawling summer house on a hill now owned by billionaire businessman Herb Chambers, of Northeast car dealership fame. Today, the Baldwin Bridge carries vehicular traffic over the spot where Charley watched sailboats, greeted ferries and looked on as mailbags were hefted into steamships bound for Brooklyn.

Also making a cameo appearance in the book is an 1835 hotel that was known as Ferry Tavern when it burned down in 1971.

Mitchell, in an interview at the StoneRidge senior living complex in Mystic where she has resided for a year and a half, said she’d been sitting on the idea for a children’s book since the letters were gifted to the society about a decade ago.

“I saw the letters and I tried to get people interested. I thought it would make a great book, but no one bit on the project,” she said. “And, finally, I snagged Edie.”

At 92 years old, the good-humored Mitchell recalled her sales pitch to Twining.

“I want to do this book before I die,” she said.

Twining, sitting by Mitchell’s side, laughed too.

“So we took extra time,” Twining said.

The duo described a process that began about four years ago with Mitchell repeatedly poring over the letters, which were discovered in a garage on Whippoorwill Road by Bob and Carol Ross.

“I just took out what I thought were the most charming or interesting pieces, and then wrote them up,” Mitchell said.

Twining, inevitably, would direct Mitchell to cut down her detail-rich accounts to only a few paragraphs.

“You can tell a lot of the story in the pictures,” Twining said. “So you don’t need to write about what’s in the pictures. You just need to write what’s happening in the story.”

The vignettes, culled from letters written when Charley was 6 years old through his 12th year, are condensed for the purposes of the book into one summer. He reported to his father about filling his wagon with treasures from the beach, going sailing with his uncle, and putting up with his temperamental younger sister. He ended each letter with his tag line: “and this is all.”

Mitchell said she was intrigued by the way Charley’s handwriting and ability to tell a story evolved over six summers in Old Lyme. He went on to become a nationally syndicated sports reporter with skills honed during his time at Yale University.

“All the letter writing to Papa may well have laid the foundation for ‘Charlie’ to pursue a career as a writer,” she wrote in a postscript to the book, where the boy’s name is spelled differently than in the letters.

The project was funded by a $3,500 grant from the Old Lyme Educational Fund. While Mitchell donated her services, Twining received $1,000 for her work and gave $200 to copy editor Kinny Kreiswirth for the assistance. The rest of the funds were used to print 400 copies of the book.

Copies are available for $20 on the society’s website. All proceeds benefit the organization.

Details that jumped out to Mitchell and Twining included references to a bathing machine neither had heard of before. The Victorian devices were small huts on wheels that would allow women to change discreetly into bathing clothes before wading directly into the water.

Twining noted with surprise that “sneakers” was a term for athletic shoes then just as it is now.

Her pictures were created in painstaking layers using computer design software rather than the opaque watercolors she’d used in her previous books. It took her about two months to produce the illustrations.

Twining’s research included visits to Herb Chambers’ home as well as the historic Captain Chadwick House on Lyme Street where Charley dined one summer with former President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife Lucy.

In one of those small-town coincidences, Mitchell recalled her own close association with the Captain Chadwick House.

“92 years ago, my mother gave birth to me there on the dining room table,” she said.

Mitchell, who like Twining summered in Old Lyme before moving there year-round, was married for 53 years to the late writer John G. Mitchell. She recalled editing manuscripts and articles he wrote for the Audubon Society, Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic, where he served as environmental editor for 10 years.

John Mitchell died in 2007 at the age of 75.

She said her husband would be “tickled pink” to know she’s written a book.

“I did a lot of editing for him. He always said, ‘you’re so good. Why don’t you write something?” she recounted. “And I said, ‘I can’t write.’”

Twining laughed.

“Well, now you finally have,” she said.

More information is available at www.oldlymehistoricalsociety.org. The letters can be viewed in the society’s archives at 55 Lyme St.