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Pedlars Creek Friday Feby 14th 1845
My Dear Mother and Brothers and Sisters
As you have all been so kind as [to] write to me I thus formally address
my letter to you all. Your letter had given me very great satisfaction and
afforded me much real pleasure. It is ye first I have received from you and
from Europe, it breathes a kind and affectionate spirit; and then it is not
only from you all but from each. In my first letters from home this is what
I like and what has filled my heart with comfort. It appears to me that you
have not one of you forgotten me, and I hope you never will. You can stretch
out the hand of affection even across the wide Atlantic. I thank the Lord
that I have still relatives in the world who think about me and pray for
me. Perhaps if you had known how precious every word is that comes from home
in this "far west" you would have sent me a few more, but
I thank
you for what has come. Your letter reached me on Saturday the first of Feby
about 7 O clock in the evening. It had reached Solon on the 24th Jany; it
had thus been full two months in coming. It had been sent by way of London
the next you send put on it "via Liverpool" and contrive
to have
it there a day or two before the Mail Steamers leave for the United States
which I think will be about the 1st and 15th of each month. But you may see
by an Advertisement in some Lpool papers. I can my dear Mother quite enter
into your feelings when you talk about being deprived of those who are near
and dear to us, for I have in the same short space of time you mention, lost
(in a certain sense) both Father and Mother, Brothers and Sisters, Relatives
and Friends, Home and Country. What a loss! and yet I am still alive. Bless
the Lord O my Soul! I am glad to find that you betook yourself to God the
only sufficient helper of the helpless. I have often thought about you and
knew that if you did not do this that you would break down. And then my heart
has been uplifted to Him that you might be enabled to cast upon him all your