My dear brother Ralph.  We were glad to hear from you today but sorry to hear your business prospects were so poor. Would it not be better to leave Little Rock altogether & come north? I think if you were here you could find employment that would pay better than being there. We all think so and Ma thinks you ought to come home. I think perhaps your health would be better here. Cannot you settle up your affairs there & if you have not means enough, Steve can send some if it is safe. But my advice is to leave there. James Hollister was home the last I heard. His business was broken up just as yours was. I would rather be here than at Memphis.  

[My husband] James concluded after the difficulties there in Kansas not to come for us until February so we are here for the winter. They have had a great deal of trouble in Kansas. Every man over 18 & under 60 was ordered out to meet [General Sterling] Price & about 100 were taken prisoners from Shawnee County and many of them were old neighbors & acquaintances of ours. Price in his retreat kept them six days & they were robbed of money, overcoats & boots & some days had to travel 40 miles & wade streams sometimes waist deep & then lie down in their wet clothes without blankets. Price parolled them in six days but they had been treated so & almost starved too that they went home only to die. Our nearest neighbor when we lived near Topeka was one & James went down to see him & found him dying & preached his funeral sermon. Several had died right about there & others very sick.  

Gurd [Horton] & Mary are up tonight. They have a very pretty baby – Fannie Augusta. Steve killed hogs today – two for Ma & two for himself, which he sold. They are small but his two came to over $50.00. Pork is very high. He got $16.00 per hundred. He paid the taxes today also. In all they were $135.70. And last year [they were only] $29.00. They raised bounties for volunteers which made the taxes so high. Mrs. Harriett Mosher has come to make a visit for the first time since they moved away some ten or eleven years ago. Aunt Lucy [Fiddis] and [her daughter] Lucy are well. We visited there last week. Ma has a cold & cough but is better than she was. Frank Platt is very feeble.  

Write often as you can, Ralph. We often talk of you and wish you were here. And I would certainly leave there. With much love as ever, your affectionate sister, -- Augusta

December 14, 1864    Owego [New York]

Dear brother Ralph.  We received your letter of December 1st today. It makes us feel so bad to have you so low spirited and hopeless. I would not stay there another day if it was possible to get away. Come home, and you can get a place to do something I am sure, either at Washington, or Mr. Bristol may have a place for you. You can get into some business where you can earn something. Do not stay in a place where everything goes wrong with you as it seems to have been always at Little Rock.

George Stratton asks why you do not come home and get into some business here at the North. If you have not the means to come, [your brother] Steve will send you the money if it would be safe to do so. Or if you could do any kind of work to get money & settle up everything and come home. I don't know what to write to cheer you. To be sure, I have always lived in our quiet country home and do not know much of the rough and tumble of the world, but I find even here there is a dark and a bright side to most of my troubles, and it is best, & one can, I have found, look upon the bright side. You have stayed there hoping for the best, until now you seem to have got pretty low on the ladder. And now I would turn a cold shoulder on the place and leave the people who will not appreciate your worth. We have looked for you this fall, and only a few days ago Ma thought she saw you coming over from the railroad. But it turned into someone else before they got here.

We are very busy getting ready for Christmas. We are going to have a tree, and are making little things for the children to hang on it. [Your sister] Mary is coming up and perhaps Lucy [Fiddis] will come over. I wish you could be here.

We are going to feel anxious about James [Goodrich]. He expected to be back to Topeka by the middle of November. I was so glad Augusta and the children are here. There has been so much trouble there since she came. It will be lonely enough when they go back. I wish they could live nearer home.

Helen Bristol is going to be married next Tuesday to a Mr. Richardson who lives near Portage. He is in the army and was very badly wounded in October. Since he was wounded, he has received a Captain's commission. Janet McCallum Patch is very low with consumption. She is home now and they do not think she will live to go back to Towanda again. We hear that Mr. McCallum has sold his place. He does not live with his family at all [and] has not been home in two or three years. Have we written to you that Hat Wallace & Ike Horton were married? 

I hope you feel better than when you wrote. But I should close up my business if I was in your place & come home. Write as soon as you get this. If your partner had cheated you once, he would very likely do it again. All send love. Goodbye. Ever your affectionate sister -- Sarah