Noble January 19th 1897
Dear Children I will try to write to you once more it is hard work to write my hands are so lame I suppose the rheumatism but I neglect it it was more than a year since I had written to Josephs until a short time ago I wrote to them we are all well Father and myself have bad colds we could hardly speak this morning but are better now we had the grip last spring I think that is hangimg on us yet when we get alttle cold but we will not complain for I think we are most wonderfully blesed with health and strength for our age I am in my 80th year he is in 77th year do you know we was married 50 years the night before Christmas I do the washing and ironong do up Freds fine shirts and all house work mending and making for us Fred buys his clothes ready Father buys his overall I make his shirts stockings
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I do not know whether I wrote you we was going to move in march we are going toward Coldwater in the township of batavia we have afarm of 100 and 25 acres we will have abetter house there is 2 good barns on the place 3 orchards good cellar and cistern we have it 3 years 300 and 50 dollars per year
Bogardses folks are wll I have not seen them since Christmas they came hre and brought me afootstool for apresent I have not seen either of them since
Ashley I think you mae a better looking old man thanayoung one we thank you for the picture we looked at it some time before knew it when we showed it to Fred he hardly looked at it he said I dont have to take but one look to know Ashley we rent this place for 50 dollars ayear
M and S A Camfield
Prior to transcribing this letter I did not have a marraige date for Mike and Sarah so now I have 24 December 1846. I wish she had given some details or said where they were married. I assume it was in Onondaga County, NY as they were still there for the 1850 census. (There was an earlier letter that mentioned their wedding date I had doubts about the year it was written.)For more see:
Camfield Family Letters
Descendants of Sarah Ann Wisner
Michael Camfield
Henry Bogardus, Shirt-tail Cousin
Camfield, Sarah Ann (Noble, MI) to “Dear Children”
[Anna Camfield Carlisle]. Letter. 19 January 1897 Digital Images 1-2.
Privately held by Apple, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,]
Snowville, New York. 2009.
[Carlisle Family, Box #1, Correspondence, 1897,
Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 2008.]
2 comments:
Great idea to share your transcription of a letter - it's amazing what important tidbits of information we can find in them. Somebody related is going to run across your post and find a gold mine! I wish I had some old letters that my ancestors had written. I'm sure there must be some, but if there are I don't know about it.
I'm very lucky to have these. They were donated to the University of Michigan back in the 60's and 70's. I just located another collection of family letters at Western Michigan University that I hope to get copies of soon. So you never know. I'm also always amazed at all of the old letters for sale on ebay but I haven't located any from my family there yet.
Thanks for stopping by.
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