Nov 2^d 1863               

 

            Dear Wife I avail myself of this opportunity of answering your kind letter of the 10^th of last month which came to hand on the 30^th ult & found me in the enjoyment of very good health & spirits We had not received any letters from home for some time before therefore we were very anxious to hear from there your letter was filled with a great deal that was of interest to me & gave me a great deal of pleasure & satisfaction I do feel grateful to you for writing to me as much as you do as I should be lonesome indeed if I never heard from you at all you wrote you had not received a letter from me for two months well I am truly sorrow that our letters go no better than they do as I write evry week or two & some times oftener Sometimes it is two or three weeks that I cant write owing to our circumstances as before I wrote my last letter we had been two weeks from our wagons without paper. I was in a fight on the 28 of Sept but I have writenen some four letters since then you will certainly get some of them. I will say again in this that I took a horse in the fight & sold him for four hundred & fifty dollars & I let Bennett Scruggs have one hundred dollars & he wrote to Laura to pay that much to you there which I hope you will get & write to me whether you do or not you wrote to me that Mr Gooden had sold that piece of land for four hundred dollars which was what I told him to sell it for which is all it is worth for the land I would not live on again for it but considering the prices of other things & the depreciation of our money that is all most nothing well I am glad to know that you have plenty of money to do you a while but at the prices evry thing is it will or would not take long to spend that amount but as to that I know you will not spend enough to buy what you really need. I want you to do the best you can with it but I do not know what to advise you to do you wrote / that Jess had gone below to look out a place & you did not know but you had better go with him if he got a good house room well I do not know how to advise you about that ecept it is to tell you to do just as you think best it would depend upon what sort of a place he got whether handy to wood & water & the danger of staying where you are & in what situation you could leave our houses. if you should leave them in the care of some person that will take care of them I would rather some good person was living in them with the exception of wood you could live perhaps as cheap there as any other place but that will cost you a good deal. I dont know though if Jess gets a good place & you can rent your house out or leave it in the care of some good person but it would be better for you to go with him if he will take you & provide for you & more so if there is any danger of staying there. you wrote your cows had been out a month & of course you are getting no milk which grievs me to know that you have such dry living if you could get feed for a cow I had rather you would pay for the use of a cow than to have no milk & if you can get them any thing like reasonable I want you to buy some molases as sugar is out of the question I supose there will be some molases made there this fall though you wrote too that it had been very dry. Mr Titus has been very kind towards you & I am very grateful to him for it also Mr Carpenter has been the same I have written to you about our hogs you know there are some out at Mr Dervins & some at Gormans try and get them this winter because if you dont they are gone entirely & that beef also. if you can get that beef & half of the hogs it will be enough of meat to do you next year I am sorry we cant hear of Edward it may be that he is not in Crisps Regt as Crisp was promoted it may have been to some other Regt instead of the one he was in well the mail wont go out till wednesday & I will finish my letter before then                                                       

Thomas W Johnson

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