1846-1913
D
Vautier
2/2016
The following letter was sent to my grandmother Nellie Alexander O'Rouark from her dad. I did some editing on in (red). He suffered some kind of an injury and was unable to work and he died two years after this letter was written.
Shingleton Michigan April 9, 1911
Dear daughter Nellie,
I received your letter this morning and I am glad to hear you are all well. I thank you very much for the money you sent me in the letter. I have little news to tell you unless I speak of myself for I have had a hard life most of the time. I did think after the disaster befell me a year ago that I would never be in good enough condition to do another day’s work in this world but there is nothing certain but the uncertainty of things. So somebody is in the future. I do not fear the difference between the climate conditions and the nature of the work I was doing the first twenty years of my life and that of the last forty for it is not very great. I read an item in the paper and it said there was 45 inches of rain that fell in Scotland in one year. I remember well drilling turnips in the muddy wet ground on the hill of South Farthing in the year of 1855. I was then hired for $10 for two months when wet snow was hanging on the turnips which would be wet. The first turnips I touched I never set my feet on dry sandy ground when a youth except on one farm 10 or 11 winters. I was feeding cattle and hilling their turnips all through the winter. The cattle had stone buildings to stay in and they were always warm. The cattle had all the straw they could make manure of all the turnips they could and ate the tops and all so many big cattle loading the air with steam and animal magnetism from the cattle’s own atmosphere. A person’s surroundings have an effect on the person so many winters at this work made me sensitive when I came to be walking on dry sandy ground where the attraction to the earth center is very light. The electricity of the sands is not get absorbed by the earth since the disaster befell me a little over a year ago. My breathing has been uncertain. My lungs got so badly damaged with breathing has been getting more natural there is conditions that puzzle me in regard to myself. However I am satisfied that no one can teach me things as experience has taught me. I cannot explain things at this time. If I keep on improving I may in two or three weeks try to think what I can do. I feel awful tired yet and out of sorts yet I cannot say but what I have good health. I eat well and sleep well. I do not know how long Deharby Rahrborn will stop here. He may stay all summer, I don’t think he knows himself. I hope this will find you all enjoying good health as this leaves us at present.
Your affectionate father.
Edward Alexander