December 13, 1856
Knox Dec 13, 1856
Dear Sir
I take the present opportunity to inform you that we are all well at present and hope these few lines will find you enjoying the same blessing. Your last letter informed us that you intended to come home next spring if nothing happened, and you may think that we were all happy of thinking to see you as soon as that, but I have some news to tell you and I think you had better make up your mind to come home as soon as you get this for old Jacob Towsand was buried to day having died on Thursday and there is a chance of getting that farm if you want it. If you make up your mind not to come home yet, I want you to send me a letter as soon as you get this for Henry Barckley has a claim on it and he wants it in the worst kind but if you will come home we will try and get it if we can show much his claim is I do not know, but I should think that it must be all of five or six hundred dollars or more. How much the place will fetch I could not say either. Your Uncles folks are all well as far as I know, but I want you to understand when I speak of your Uncle that I do not mean any one else but David for I don not consider any of the rest any of you Uncles.
Elmina is not at home this winter. I think she is in Troy or Watervliet. Charles Saddlemires wife gave birth to two girls last week with the seventeen or eighteen in the family. I believe Esther Josiah Havelys wife has got another child it is some two months old ??? John Saddlemires wife is dead. Your brother wants you to come home and if you encourage him he says he means to go and try his luck in California for he cannot stand th hard work any more where he is he says that this will be the last he works for ??Koscious R.Kenney, but I tell him that he has said so more than once and it will turn out just so this time that when this year is up that he will stay another and so on till he died. Your Mother and Henry Orelup and his wife were out to see your Uncle Peter Havely and they are all well and all married but the youngest one Elizabeth. John Havely says that he would give five dollars if he could see you.
