Citing a letter from a funeral home addressed to "whom it may concern"

By rtkoehler on Wed, 02/18/2026 - 07:58

Forums

I am trying to determine how to properly cite this artifact which is in my possession.

Letter from funeral home





















Using EE8 Template 7, I get:

Fullerton Funeral Home, Inc., letter, New York, 7 February 1994; Koehler Family Collection, privately held by R. T. Koehler, [address for private use,] Tampa, Florida, 2026. Inherited by R. T. Koehler from his grandfather, William Rowe Koehler, upon his death in 2021.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but shouldn't there be somewhere in the citation that references what the letter is about? 

Submitted byEEon Thu, 02/19/2026 - 17:28

Hello again, rtkoehler,

You chose the right template, but the description in Layer 1 (the layer that describes the letter) leaves out half of the Who? data.  Every letter is from someone and to someone. We should identify both, even if the "to" is "to whom it may concern."  

As for whether the citation should say what the letter is about, typically, that information is given in the text. If, for some reason, your source note cites this "cold," without any discussion of it in the text, then you would need to explain why it is being cited.