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Dear Sister Jenny,
We received your letter yesterday and had been looking for
one for some time. We cannot thank you enough for your kind remembrance of our
little ones, but come here and we will try. They were all well pleased with Aunt
Jenny's presents, and ran out to meet me as I came home to tell me what you had sent them.
We have been very busy since we
took charge of the store. I have built a small room to keep it in, and a small room
for a kitchen, also a stable for my horses. I have also been away from home half the
time travelling to Ogden and Corinne, selling and buying for the store. Susan has
also been very hard worked having to attend to the store, and home, for although we have
had a hired girl nearly all the time they will not stay long. I had to get me a new
wagon which cost me 150$ or £ 30. I was so hurried with my work that I could not
dig my potatoes & beets and snow and frost came on and they are yet in the ground.
We also have charge of the Post Office here. To finish about ourselves I can
say we are all well, busy, and likely to be so. The winter this far has been very
mild, too much so for instead of good roads and sleighing, we have mud and it is very hard
on my horses travelling with a load.
The Utah Northern R.R. is being built through this County, we
hear the whistle every day, it is about 10 miles from here. I do not know yet what I
shall do next summer. I can stay at home and farm and take care of the Store, go on
the U.N.R.R. to work, or go to the mines again. I shall do that which in the spring
promises to pay the best in cash, for although there is plenty of work and pay it is not
always in money.
I have written to Charley but get no answer. We had a
letter from Fanny some time ago saying she would like to come here. I answered her
but have not heard more. There is work for almost any tradesman in the large towns,
but nearly all on coming here like to own some land and a house and other fixings and so
go into a small settlement and farm for a while. In times past all were obliged to
do this for there were no shops to work in or factories, but now it is not so.
You are young, just at the age to lay a foundation for future
life, contrast what it will be if laid in England. You cannot expect to marry a man
who will ever be able to obtain a living only by his daily work, and that even uncertain,
with no prospect of his raising above it. Should you settle here it would be a poor
thing of a man indeed who could not own all he had around him and be above being compelled
to work daily for his living. You may not be able to see the difference in this as I
do, but if it should be your lot to pass through it, you will know what I now tell you.
The poorest people here are well off compared to the poor in England. I have
not yet seen any who have come to this country but what have become better off and have a
much more comfortable home, of working men and women. Some who came with a little
means and a big head are not so well off, somehow their money does not go so far as a
man's hard work for himself. Men's wages here this harvest were 2 Bushel of wheat or
80 lb of flour a days work, enough to last a family 2 weeks. Girls are so scarce
here they are engaged to work before they leave the Rail Road Station.
Keep your place as long as you can, save all the money you
can, let it be your object to come here, and I think that you will do better to be in
service rather than at Fannys. Do not despair, cheer up and say you will.
Susan sends her love and all the little ones also, and hope that we shall hear from
you soon.
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