Sunday, November 2, 2014

John Brown to his Family, February 6, 1856

Osawatomie, K. T., Feb. 6, 1856.

Dear Wife And Children, Every One, —  . . . Thermometer on Sunday and Monday at twenty-eight to twenty-nine below zero. Ice in the river, in the timber, and under the snow, eighteen inches thick this week. On our return to where the boys live we found Jason again down with the ague, but he was some better yesterday. . Oliver was also laid up by freezing his toes, —one great toe so badly frozen that the nail has come off. He will be crippled for some days yet. Owen has one foot some frozen. We have middling tough times (as some would call them), but have enough to eat, and abundant reasons for the most unfeigned gratitude. It is likely that when the snow goes off, such high water will prevail as will render it difficult for Missouri to invade the Territory; so that God by his elements may protect Kansas for some time yet.  . . . Write me as to all your wants for the coming spring and summer. I hope you will all be led to seek God “with your whole heart;” and I pray him, in his mercy, to be found of you. All mail communications are entirely cut off by the snowdrifts, so that we get no news whatever this week. . . .

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 222-3

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