Springhill, Navarro County,Texas, April 13^th 59

 

My Dear Wife

                        I left this place on 3^rd of this month to meet R. H. Mathews at Fort Belknap and see my lands and have my papers all recorded in the County where my lands are  &c and I rode one day faceing a cold still Norther, and when I reached Ed Pendletons in Ellis County eleven miles from Milford, I was prostrated with an attact of neuralgia in my head jawes, also a chill and a high feever. I lay before the fire on a good feather bed and toasted my feet and went through a thorough course of medicine and lay up for six days and was never treated kinder than cousin Sarah Pendleton treated me. I am up and stout again. I returned to Dr Washes yesterday with Mr Hal Lyon and J D W Hill and i found Dr Wash a greateel worse he has grown feeble rapidly for the ten days I was absent. he thinks spring is now about over and warm weather set in that he will take a turn for the better he says if the weather is fair and open on the 20^th or 22^nd of this month he will start to Tenn with me any way and ride in his buggy to Heamsted and if he stands it pretty well he and his Lady & Nat will go on with me to M^cMinnville. Harve Mathews wrote me that I had not better go to Belknap, as it was unsafe. the Indians has been killing the whites and selling their horses by whole sale. they come down in to Bell County in 8 miles of where W. W. Bishop and Hyram Christain lives and killed five or six persons and stole some children and several horses. 

 

The Indians went to the house of a very clever man and called him and his wife out and shot them both down and took their two daughters one about 15 years old the other about 13 years the latter they ravished and otherwise brutally mutilated her person and killed her. her sister they also killed. they took the children but they was recaptured by the whites. So I was unwilling to risk my scalp amonghst them. Matthews has wrote me to meet him at Waco where he is buying corn for the Army forty miles from Dr Washes. I will go to Waco to morrow and talk all our Texas land matters over and over again, and I will leave all my papers in Mathews hands and he will have them recorded and as Col Neighbors and Ross the Agents are mooveing the restive Indians out west to the Witchataw Mountain on Red River, Mathews will have no troubles in geting pattents for my land. I think then if Dr Hill gets well that he will buy one of my tracts of land and I think perhaps I have a prospect to sell John Pickett a tract for real estate in M^cMinnville. he is establishing a stock farm near Pendletons and Hal Lyon is going to attend to it for him. Lyon got a letter yesterday from Pickett and he said he would be at Pendletons & Lyons by the 20^th of this month. I have left a proposition with Lyon and Pendleton to submit to Pickett which they think he will acceed to. Ed Pendleton has just returned from Mexico with spanish mares. he has a splendid farm and lives in a good neighborhood and is much better and more comfortably fixed than I exspected to find him. 

 

Cousin Sarah and all the family are very well they look rosey and red in the face they all seame to be cheerfull and well satisfied they send their especial love to you all. Anna their oldest daughter is comeing to Tenn with me to go to school two years. She is about grown. Hal C. Lyon has made an arrangement with an old Bachalor to live in the house with him this year and he is very comfortably situated in a beautiful grove good water and on a splendid tract of land and he is the best pleased man I ever saw his wife weighed 108^lb when she left Tenn now she weighs 124^lb and looks full in the face. all of his family is well and looks well. They all send their love to you and Hal says in May when antelopes has fawnes he intends to ketch you two and contrive them to Tenn.

 

Well Mary you cannot imagine the pleasure and comfort that your letter of the 6-7 & 8^th and A P Smartts of 15^th and Col Watersons of 19^th of March give me they all come by the same mail. your letter has been read three or four times. I was sory to learn that you was so resless and could not be comforted, makeing your self so on my account. I will assure you my dear wife that I am a complete changed man. it has been near six weeks since I got thirsty and got drink and I can say that I am more resolved than to day than I ever was all I want to say in trouth is that I am truly a good man ready to leave this world at any moment with assurances that I enter a better one when I leave this. I am now fully dedicated to that end and for that purpose. I live for nothing else on earth but for your happiness and comfort and my own. this is the last letter that I shall write before we start for home, that place that is sweeter and dearer to me than all others on this earth. 

 

I wrote to Ann Nelson W B Smartt & Dr Hill from Milford on the 9^th We had a severe frost here the last day of March that killed all of Dr Hills peaches that was as large as partrage eggs Kill all of cousin Minerveys garden she had beans in bloom nearly it also killed Dr Hills corn and he has to plow it all up and plant over his wheat the forwardest is injured but the majority of his crop is not injured. Dr Hill suffered worse than his neighbors did for he is cultivating bottom land it is damper and the frost hurts worse. I do not think that the damage done by the frost is very extensive for the high dry prairies was not hurt Pendletons neighborhood is not hurt. We have had splendid raines for the last few days and crops looks promising and all the Texians are rejoiceing that it has commencing raining again in this country.

 

Some times I think that Dr Wash can not hold out through this spring and summer then again he ralies and looks well enough. he is a whole saled high stroung generous hearted man and is willing to accomodate a relative or a friend at any and all times and if he gets juney I cannot leave him on the road however anxious I may be and am to get home he is pleased to have the opportunity of accompanying me to Tenn.

 

I will stop one day at Whelock and see Dr Dee Hill who has made a fortune and is very feeble not exspected to live he is in the last stages of consumption. He sent word by Jeff Hill who has just returned from there for me to come by and see him. he wants me to help him fix some of his property to some of his poor nephews & neaces in Tenn he has no children. 

 

Say to Col. Waterson that I am very much obliged to him for his kind letters and in confidence I hope it may so turn round that he may be our representative in Congress yet. Say to him that I pray for it, that wherever he goes or wherever he may be that he has one standing up and well wishing friend.

 

Say to Mr Parsons that I would have wrote him a letter before now but pen & paper is scarse and it was all that I could do to get a supply to write to you. Say to him that I have not stoped at but two houses since I left that is as well kept as the Warner House a great many Southerners said that they intended to revisit Beersheba this spring & summer and would go via M^cMinnville. I wish Mr Parsons had a good supply of the fat beef & mutton that covers the hills & prairies of Texas they are as sleek as raice horses. Say to Cous H. L. W. Hill that Dr Wash thinks of spending three or four months on the Mountain with him and Cousin Isaac if he can rally strength enough to get there. I deeply regret the death of Miss Julia Moffitt in the way it occured say to Mr Wallace that I get the New Sun regularly and it keeps me posted for which I am indebted to him. I hope this will not beat me home many days. Dick or Alfred says Judge Walling wants to rent my store house it is not for rent I exspect to go in to buisness in the fall

 

My love to Mother by Dick and all friends & relations

 

your kind and devoted Husband

B. J. Hill

SOURCES