Letter from Asbjørn to Anders ROE (1 Mar 1872)

Letter. Asbjørn to Anders ROE (1 Mar 1872). Images courtesy of Verla Williams.

Dear Son Anders Raae with wife and children,

Now is gone by so long a time since we heard news from you and have sent to you 2 letters, one 4 weeks before Christmas and one other after Christmas, but still no answer has arrived so I will then send you some more word in hope that you, if you still are in this life, without delay must write to us. We have been and become more and more worried and especially your mother when we fear that you are not well, we console ourselves also thereby that perhaps the letters are lost enroute.

As far as existing circumstances are concerned, so we have been and still are healthy in body, thank God who controls everything well by his powerful Word. There has been and is much illness around in the settlement.

Many are sick from the so-called spot fever and some dead. Villiam Olson married to Gudmund Martha has been near death of this sickness and is still severely ill and his wife lives in “child-bed” so we have had to entrust Anna and Ole to them. The so-called small pox goes also in the settlement, so it works much with vaccination which in many cases is not effective.

We have had to live in the little log house which you helped me to build on the new land. The winter came so severe that we with difficulty got on the old and the winter has been _____ then not so severe after Christmas, average snow with good sleighing.

Ole Fredrikson is by his same sickness has not been in bed for a six weeks time, his sickness is such that he can seldom lie in the bed or can for a short time, but must sit by the bed in a _____ inner scaffolding, can now and then go over the floor with help of cane. He consists for the most with pain in the stomach with coughing, shortness of breath and nausea so it has been especially difficult for them now for ten months _____. I hope it has improved him on the soul’s behalf.

Closing is you with family many loving greetings from us all wishing that we all must by the heart seek the grace in the grace’s time so that the creed and confession which we confess us to should not become us to the great judgment and death, but to life and salvation. Amen!

Amherst the 1st March 1872

Asbjørn H. Raae

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