Saturday, September 5, 2015

John Brown to his Family, March 12, 1857

Springfield, Mass., March 12, 1857.

Dear Wife And Children All, — I have just got a letter from John. All middling well, March 2, but Johnny, who has the ague by turns. I now enclose another from Owen. I sent you some papers last week. Have just been speaking for three nights at Canton, Conn., and at Collinsville, a village of that town. At the two places they gave me eighty dollars. Canton is where both father and mother were raised. They have agreed to send to my family at North Elba grandfather John Brown's old granite monument, about eighty years old, to be faced and inscribed in memory of our poor Frederick, who sleeps in Kansas.1 I prize it very highly, and the family all will, I think. I want to see you all very much, but cannot tell when I can go back yet. Hope to get something from you here soon. Direct as before. May God bless you all!

Your affectionate husband and father.
_______________

1 This note from a friend in Connecticut shows how soon the gravestone was removed to North Elba: [Click Here].

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 375

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