Passionate Abolitionist and
Witness to the American Civil War
Passionate Abolitionist and
Witness to the American Civil War
This one page seems to have been kept from a longer letter because the early curator of the family letters probably foresaw historic interest in the culinary information it provides.
(Paragraphs entered to help comprehension. Punctuation is lacking in many cases. Spelling is frequently left uncorrected.)
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Cousin Sarah
I begin to feel acquainted with you and thought I would have a little chat with you this afternoon and tell you how we live here. there is great plenty of everything here for money. there is 4 for wagons goes by our house every day retailing meat milk, bakers bread & groceries and fresh fish comes twice a week we pay 8 cents per gallon for milk in the summer 10 in winter and from 8 – 22 cents per lb for beef, retail pork and mutton. a little cheaper for poultry about the same as beef we had a nice turkey for dinner to day cost 20 cents a pound and fouls are 16 eggs and yard fowls 16. eggs are 36 cents per dozen in winter about half that in the summer I generally buy a quarter of beef of some farmer about 125 or 250lb Part I hang up in our store room to eat fresh part I cut in pieces enough to cook at once and put it into brine strong enough to bear an egg it keeps sweet till March sometimes till May in February we take out a few pieces free from brine and hang up in our kitchen to dry it keeps her good all summer .
My wife always peels the potatoes before boiling I think it is a good a plan we very seldom boil cabbage. she takes a solid cabbage and cuts the white part as fine as mincemeat seasons it with salt & pepper & a little mustard seed and puts it into an earthen pot and fez and pours good vinegar on it to keep it covered it is ready for for immediate use without any cooking will keep weeks or months I like it much we always have meat on the table twice a day. if there is any potatoes left at noon my wife slices them and fries them next morning wife next morning in some gravy. Now we have buckwheat cakes every morning baked on a gridiron on top of the stove. I like them much we spread them with butter & syrup which comes from the sugar house we always have fruit on the table of some kind. apples in the winter. stewed or roasted and sumer we have plenty of strawburs & raspberries & currents & gooseberries of our own growing also dried apples stewed which is very good either for pies or sauce we dry them in autumn pare them slice to the core and dry them a little in the sun finish them about about the stove they will keep sweet years.
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Cousin Sarah, when I address you I mean your sisters & brothers and especially your Father made his life & health & reason be continued till it please our heavenly Father to take him & may he be prepared & resigned & submissive to the will of his creator, preserver & kind benefactor because goodness and mercy have followed him all the days of his life & may each of these blessings be ours. They will if we seek them I hope you will keep me informed how your Father’s health is and also cousin Charles. I supose I shall never hear of John and Elizabeth Jackson again present my best wishes to Wm and his wife tell them I wish them much holiness then they are sure to have much happiness I have not known the address of them and Elizh lately so I direct all my papers to you supposing they will see them also. I hope we shall correspond often in future if you ever come to America I should be glad to see you and would pay you a visit but I don’t like crossing the ocean
I had an English & Scotch neighbors visit their homes last sumer they had a fearful passage out. My wife thinks you will be tired of reading my scribble. I tell her I guess not. Sarah I think Solomon’s words are true as far as this world is concerned every one event happeneth to all in every generation since Adam’s fall. One might call on every family in the world and find that all having trouble of some kind something wanting except those that had learned the apostles lesson. I have learned that in whatsoever state I am in therewith to be content. Lord teach us that lesson. Last week we buried a neighbor 73 and another near his end 84 I have entered my 11th hour. I hope I can say Jesus thy blood and righteousness is my glorious robe my richest dress: nothing in any honor I bring, simply to the cross I cling shall we meet in heaven where parting is no more I hope so.
I should love to hear from your brothers and sisters sometime. my son Charles has bought a lot of ground adjoining mine 63 by 140 feet cost 775 doll. I use it for a garden & with my own little gardening gives me employment a considerable time we raise our own vegetables and fruit we have plenty of grapes hear last year I made a barrel of wine. one of my neighbors made 80 gallons but we must keep sober. I must leave the rest till another time
with our best wishes to you all & a happy new year
Farewell my friend
John Watson.
The Ambassadors had concluded from earlier evidence regarding William Slater’s pivotal relationship to the authors of the largest part of this trove of historic letters that it was he who first assembled and curated the bulk of the letters in what is now “The Thomas Jackson Collection”.
Obviously we can never know his thinking, but, having spent many years reading and transcribing all the documents that have come down to us, the ambassadors can relate to the likelihood that he probably had many more letters pass through his hands but judged that the contents of many of them were insignificantly meaningful to those who came after and might be looking from a historical perspective.
From our own experience, we speculate that William simply did not save them all. We guess that this single page came from a letter whose other pages did not contain material he judged worth keeping.
However, the detailed account of Mr & Mrs Watson’s catering will surely interest food historians and was thus judged worth keeping.
Typically the other site was devoted to John Jackson’s frequent proselytizing about his religion and the inadequacies of others’ dedication to his faith! We see that in virtually every letter john Watson wrote.
This implies that, even in his own time, William Slater recognized that he was in possession of valuable original source manuscripts (particularly the detailed contemporaneous documents from his cousin Thomas Jackson) that would be of significant historical value in the future. For the ambassadors and all who have read TJ’s impassioned descriptions of events and politics at the time, it is impossible not to feel, “Wow, these are amazing. Someone needs to keep them and make the contents known to historians.”
This sense of historical responsibility is what has now fueled this project for a decade of our lives.