| Title: | John Campbell, Augusta to Thomas Campbell, Belfast. |
|---|---|
| ID | 466 |
| Collection | Irish Emigration Database |
| File | Campbell, John/106 |
| Year | 1820 |
| Sender | Campbell, John |
| Sender Gender | male |
| Sender Occupation | merchant |
| Sender Religion | unknown |
| Origin | Augusta, Georgia, USA |
| Destination | Belfast, N.Ireland |
| Recipient | Campbell, Thomas |
| Recipient Gender | male |
| Relationship | business, friends (prob. brothers-in-law) |
| Source | T 3597/5: Deposited by Mrs. F.W.C. Clarendon. |
| Archive | The Public Record Office, Northern Ireland. |
| Doc. No. | 9310460 |
| Date | 01/07/1820 |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | EMG |
| Log | Action By Date Document added by C.R., 15:10:1993. |
| Word Count | 841 |
| Genre | |
| Note | |
| Transcript | Dear Sir Your letter of the 16th February came to hand in due course. I am truly sorry that you should have connected yourself with a partner who was at the time a bankrupt and who had no hope of from his former conduct of ever obtaining a discharge from the commissioners. To such a character we ought always to keep a respectful distance, for their touch is contamination and ruin. I have no doubt you have acted always with great good will and liberality towards my mother. I am confident it was her wish to benefit Jane as much as any other of her children and I hope she will always have it in her power to live comfortably herself and when occasion presents, add to the social comfort of her offspring. I have been for sometime past to prove a bill for £60 to send her for her annual present from me, but such is the state of Exchange betwixt here & Philadelphia and New York that any good bills there were for sale has been bought up at 5 and 6% premium to remit to sell in those cities; the consequence is I have not been able to procure one that can be depended on for to send to my good mother. In the course of the summer I will no doubt be able to procure one which will be forwarded to her. The times here has been very unpropitious for the last two years, and the past bids few to equal any of them. There are very few who have cleared their expenses and many in that time have sunk a good fortune, which required many hard years of industry in this inhospitable climate to accumulate. I am pleased to find that William John spells and expresses himself so well in his letters. He ought to learn to write straight up and down. It is a vile and ruinous practice taught boys in your place to lean their writing too much. Harper I cannot break of this, and I fear from his indifferent careless manner that he never will be a good writer. William is more attentive to it and now writes an excellent hand. It is of more importance to boys to write and figure well than they generally imagine. They can make themselves useful when they do so but if they are bad writers they are of no use for a length of time in a store. William John makes a bad J in his name. Experience enables me to know that a J made in the way as he does, is very inconvenient and does not look well. I have some thoughts about leaving this place on the 4th July for the north. I intend to go to Savannah and probably Charleston and take shipping from one of those places for New York or Boston. I hope to be back here the 20th October or 1st of November. My good Uncle Arthur Harper spent his winter in Charleston on business with Aunt and Eliza. They spent #PAGE 2 three weeks in Savannah in March and part of the month of April in this place. Cousin Eliza is grown a fine accomplished woman and appears to great advantage as sole heiress of my uncle. They left him late in April for Charleston where they embarked for Philadelphia on the 10th of May and arrived in Philadelphia on the 14th having the passage in the short space of 4 days and being nearly lost on Cape Hatteras off the coast of North Carolina in a gale of wind. My Uncle looks as well as he did twenty years ago, and is yet active although he entered his seventy three year the 25th February last. Since they returned to Philadelphia my aunt has been very ill and is considered in great danger as the diagnosis is a pulmonary one. I have just received a letter from a correspondent in Knoxville, Tennessee informing me of the death of my poor brother Josias. He died in Huntsville, State of Alabama, on the 11th March last in a few days sickness of billious cholick [colic?], which is the only sickness he may be said to have been subject to since his arrival in this country. He has gone to his great judge who I trust will pardon all his imperfections, and wash away all tears from his eyes and make him as white as the snow in the blood of the lamb that taketh away the sins of man. He poor brother pressed sorely on my purse but more so on my feelings. I forgave and nightly since he came here, prayed to God to change his conduct and forgive him altho' [although?] his faults were only injurious to himself and me. Very few others ever did complain or had reason to complain of him. Tender my best love and duty to my mother, Jane, William John, sisters, brothers and all friends and believe me as affectionately yours John Campbell. |
