Nantucket, Mass
July 22, 1869
Dr. J. Benjamin
Hutchinson, Minn
Dear Friend,
This day finds me on the cool sandy isle off in the Atlantic
Ocean. I left home to attend the
coliseum or the “Hub” and the effect of that mighty occasion when I mingled my
small voice with two thousand of my brothers and sisters in the ___ and
listened to the instrumental performance of one thousand trained musicians and
saw a curious auditing of twenty thousand patrons daily for one week took hold
of me so deeply and thoroughly that instead of hurrying back to my prairie farm
and its cares I have taken this golden opportunity to tarry awhile in New
England and cool off before I travel west again. We have visited our native town in New Hampshire,
Milford, sang at the laying of the corner stone of a big town hall for which
they are expending 75 thousand dollars.
Sacred ___ of yore gathered at the old family table at the old homestead,
pledged mutual friendship ____ & parted.
____ Lynn had grown as fast as any western city, so by advice of my best
friends I shall hold on a while longer to what I thought when I left Minn. I should sell right off. Have rented my cottage for another term and
measured up the land. I found one man
has put a 5 story house on to about 300 feet of my land and right in front of
my best lots. What should I do with
him?
Lynn is full of business.
The crispers flood the streets going to and from their shops. The shoe interest is consolidating and
concentrating. The city is now a suburb
of Boston, has 25 steam car trains a day and 16 horse cars, all in land that a
few years ago was sold by the acre now sells quick at high prices per
foot. The shrewd merchants tell me that
the growth of the west is what sustains them in their expansion. The hum of machining making shoes is as loud
and continuous almost as the waves of the sea.
From Lynn, where we had nearly one hundred dolls given us for a
Methodist church in our settlement on numerous ___ and large hospitality. Wife
desires ___ myself your ___ to New Bedford ___ stay ten days with our relatives
(wife’s sister), Mrs. James S. Kelley.
$15 were given here to the ___ Church.
___ we railroaded and steamed to Nantucket, this island of
the sea. We’re at my father-in-law’s. We are spending a few weeks and shall in
meantime hold absent and make some further additions to our church fund. We want you to make some movement for the
pledges of funds in our own settlement and we will help all we can here by
securing contributions from here.
Dr., as I shall not get home to help ___ ___, will you not
happen over at the close of the day as early as possible and see how he is managing
and advise him? When to cut & where
to stack the different grain and all.
And if he gets in a tight place will you not have the further care to
help him out, and I will reciprocate this forever. He writes me that the crop is looking finely. Perhaps you can help him a day or two if he
should need for which he will perhaps compensate you.
Please write me after your visits, how you find things and
how he is getting along. If any better
help than he has can be secured, please inform him.
Did you have a good celebration the 4th of July?
Don’t you think that all the straw of my field can be packed
or stacked up near the old place of last year?
And is there not some good thrashers that you can recommend who can do
better than those we employed last year?
Is there not a good mare in your circuit that Lisa can get to put with
our old mare to do our fall plowing? I
suppose you are at your haying and harvesting in full force. The reports are favorable for grain
everywhere. Is there any emigration coming
in to stop or do they push on further west?
Please advise ___ how to store the grain should he be
successful in saving it in the stacks.
I trust the Republicans of Minnesota will not break issue on
any local question that will cause them a defeat and a transfer of power to a
rotten Democracy.
Please write me a letter of general impress pertaining to
our settlement. Give my kind regards to
your wife & family all. And believe
me…..
Yours truly,
Asa B. Hutchinson
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