What did Margaret write about?


Farm [5k]

April the 7, 1864

Dear husband I received your letter April 7 and I felt happy to hear from you. We are all well now. I suppose I must write about the wind and weather as you wished in your letter that you wrote at the isthmus which I received March 6. Your last letter that you wrote at New York I never got until the last week in February. I sent to the [post] office twice or three times a week. We have a great deal of snow since you left. The 17 day of February was the coldest day that ever blowed. I milked at 11 o'clock and it froze quite hard before night. It was so cold Robert would not cut any wood and for 3 days. I sawed all we burnt with that old saw that has no handle but thank the lord I bore it patient. I went to Mr. Clark's funeral the father of Julia and his oldest son was buried last week. If anybody is to be pitied it is Mrs. Clark. Homer's father has sold his farm and sheep to...Cahpman farm at 18 dollars an acre and sheep at 6 dollars a head...P.P. is arriving today and [it] has rained for two weeks. I think he will never get the wheat [planted]. I have been trying to get him to nail on a few rails but no go and if I can't do it myself I will get somebody else to. The old mare has been very badly maimed. I think that those big loads of wood was what done it but I guess she will make out to hobble in the spring's work.



Excerpt from Margaret A. King correspondence, One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North, Eugene Murdock, editor, Champaign: University of Illinois:351, 356. Original letters at the Illinois Historical Survey.

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