Dear Brother

Yesterday I received your letter of the 18th Instant containing the melancholy account of the death of our Brother's Daughter Mary. The effect it had on my family you can better imagine than I describe. After our friends had passed with us several days in mutual happiness and with their cheerful and affectionate adieus almost still ringing in our ears, to find them at once plunged in the depth of sorrow and affliction cannot but excite the most painful sensations.

Our good Brother has it is true several times experienced the agonizing feels of a bereaved parent, and bore it with becoming fortitude, but the dreadful manner in which this darling Child has been taken from them will I fear long, very long, prey upon the minds of him and Cornelia. Is it not extraordinary as it is affecting that in our family, one dear and lovely and ever to be lamented Child should violently be destroyed by one element, and this dear regreted one by another? But we must silently submit to the high behests of the Almighty to murmur is to be impious.

It would give Maria and myself great satisfaction could you find it convenient to make us a visit. It is now perhaps too late in the fall to expect it but will it not be possible that so desirable an occurence could take place next Winter?

Maria & the Children join me in good wishes to Susan Jane & the family.

Yours Affectionately

G.G. Lansing

21 October 1810

Notes:
Four of John and Cornelia Lansing's children died in infancy. Presumably, Mary Lansing died in a fire, while her cousin drowned.

Historical and Archeological Resources of Castleton Island State Park
A tragedy occurred on a Saturday afternoon in January 1807 "on one of the branches of the river about ten miles below town [Albany]." A sleigh travelling from Albany to Schodack "very suddenly" broke through the ice and "sank immediately under the ice." The sleigh contained Gerrit Y. Lansing with Jane Ann Lansing and two other young ladies; Jane Ann Lansing, oldest daughter of Sanders Lansing of Albany, was drowned (Harrison 1807). This might have happened in Schodack Creek, perhaps a short distance south of the present railroad bridge over Upper Schodack Island.