On 26 April 1849 The Inverness Courier reported that “Emigration now agitates the public mind throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland”. In fact emigration had been a major social issue for many years prior to the Courier's claim. Historically, Scotland has been a country of net out-migration, with more people leaving to live elsewhere than moving to live in Scotland. While the majority of the emigrés in the mid-nineteenth century went to America and British North America (ie Canada) significant numbers came to Australia. Many of those emigrés wrote “home” to family and friends and some of those letters, mostly intended as private correspondence but with the expectation that they would be passed around among other family and friends, found their way into the newspapers of the time. This paper looks at a couple of those published letters and considers the potential for small personal items to have an influence far beyond their intended purpose.