Sidney March 11th 1869

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My Dear Wandering Son

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We received a letter from you last summer dated July I think. Tempe and I wrote you soon after. I sent the letter to Barlow. I presume he wrote you very soon. We wrote to the girls with directions where they could send letters with the expectation that you would get them. No doubt Elvira and Mary wrote you very soon after hearing where you was for we had all felt anxious to hear from you and now I have been waiting week after week hoping to hear from you but no news from any source. So I have concluded to write again and when I get my sheet full I don’t know but I may as well throw it to the care of the wind as to put it in the post office. You said you had got no letters from home nor from any of the family in within two years. I can’t tell you how many has been sent, but I think there must have been quite a respectable number all told and whether Uncle Sam’s boys are so negligent they don’t send them on or you keep yourself where they can’t find you I don’t know, but if you get this scroll do write immediately for I feel very anxious to hear from you. I suppose if you haint got any letters from any of the family the last six months then you don’t know where to direct letters any better than you did then, so I will just mention where your Brothers and sisters are. Tempe and Lucius are here, Barlow is in Scranton, send letters to Polo for Elvira and Adeline, Mary is on Plum river but I suppose she would get a letter from Elizabeth as soon as any place. There has been great change here since you left, some dead and some married and some gone to the war. Barlow Murwin died last June, Milton is in the army, Harriet with the two youngest boys live where they have these years. Perhaps you haint heard that Fordyce is in the army. He went as a musician in the first company that went from Polo, stayed eight months, then the company was disbanded and went home. He stayed home a few weeks then enlisted and went again. This winter he has enlisted in the US as Liu over a company of darkies so it seems he means to see the war ended or die in the struggle. There has been a great deal of sickness, especially among children for the last three years. All over the country they are taken with a sore throat and fever. The most young children that have it die and a good many grown up people have died with it. George B and Jane have lost their youngest son, a promising little fellow nearly three years old. He died with croup. They have a son and daughter left. Do you get news enough from the States to keep yourself well informed about this dreadful wicked war. If you don’t and you live to see it ended and then read the history from the beginning you will find so much barbarity and suffering recorded that you won’t know how to credit it all. Here at the North we don’t feel it as they in the seceded States have where hundreds, yes thousands, have been driven from their homes and many hung on the first tree, others to hide in swamps and caves to starve for nothing, only they are unwilling to fight against the federal government. When the war will end or what it will amount to none but God can tell but one thing looks pretty clear, it will put an end to slavery. Lucius, Tempe and I are here in the old hive yet, but this is the last year. Lucius took a lease for five years and it will end the first of Jan. He says he shan’t hire it again. The rent is high and taxes are high and labor high. He thinks it won’t pay and he don’t want so much land to work, so we will have to go into the old Birdsall house. Do you ever think of coming home. I have about given up all hopes of seeing you in this world. May I hope to see you in a better. May God grant that I may.

your Mother

Whitfield Chase

 

We are to have a railroad. They have been at work on the East end all winter, got below Oneonta and they are at work in Unadilla.