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Grimshaw Grove
July 26,1857
Dear Louisa,
It being Sunday afternoon, I sit down to enjoy myself talking to you. You must excuse this little letter this time as I do not feel able to write a long one. I am feeling pretty miserable all the time now, I guess it will be the last I shall write before my sickness,(birth of last child) so you may expect the next one from Ginnie. I received yours on Friday and was glad to hear from you all. I also received one from Martha and Sarah Jane last week, which should have answered before yours, but Emma has written so I thought I would let this one do for all a little while longer. We have a mail going through this place now once a week therefore our letters will go and come with more regularity than when we had to go twelve miles to the PO.
There has been some trouble in the territory with the Indians but the last accounts are that all a quiet and no more trouble is apprehended. We have not seen any of them and the place where they committed their outrages is fifty miles away from us, with a fort filled with soldiers between us and them. We do not feel alarmed as yet any of us in this settlement except Maggie White who appears to be in great perturbation about them, so that we do not tell her anything we hear concerning them and do not let her see the newspapers, her life is more precious than the rest of us you know. We had another pest last week in the shape of a cloud of grasshoppers which came down like snow flakes, eating up everything that came in their way. Robert thought his whole crop was gone, however, they went up again the next day and did not do as much damage as was expected. They ate the tops off of nearly an acre of potatoes and a great deal of corn, but they did not touch our garden although Whites and Pollocks were completely destroyed. Our crops, garden do look very promising now. We have pear, beans, beets, cucumbers, turnips, radishes, onions, salad in abundance, besides herbs of kind growing nicely. Plenty of sweet corn also tomatoes which I am afraid will be too late to ripen much. I wish you had been here on the fourth. We had company from another settlement. We expected Mrs. Nuttall but were disappointed. However we had eight and Maggie W. had four besides our own families to dinner and tea, there was one Lady among them. I will tell you what we had for dinner, in the first place we had turtle soup then a wild goose with green peas and salad, coffee and milk for those that wanted. Plenty of good bread and butter and last rhubarb pies and rice pudding, but against all was over I was pretty well tired out with cooking and baking, I needed more help than I had I assure you. J. Hunt (James Baldwin Hunt) was among the number of our guests, he has bought a place about seven miles from us and is now busy farming. I tell him he ought to have brought a wife with him from B for he wants one badly but he says he would not bring one out here to be dissatisfied, he wants one that is already here and satisfied with the country. I say he will have to wait until some of the children grow up as young ladies are very scarce. Have you seen Alf Dungan since he came home? He has written a letter to Ginnie in which he gives her a very pressing invitation to come on this fall and pay them all a visit, also Frank and her mother joins in the invitation, but I guess it will not be accepted for if there was nothing else I could not spare her now. But I must bring my letter to a close, Elwood, Lidy and Willie are playing around in the house and out, there is a good shade here, the house is in the edge of a grove, Lidy says tell her that I like her, Willie says, so do I. Ginnie and Emma have gone to Pollocks which is about a quarter of a mile off, Robert has gone walking round somewhere and it is near tea time. Give my love to your mother and all inquiring friends. Mrs. Clark (wife of Hoag) has gone on a visit to Phila.
From your friend Mary P. Grimshaw
Noted in margin- The mosquitoes bite me so much I can hardly write.