My Dear Child:

I have yours of March 4th 1743-4 and am glad to find by it that your health continues after the recovery from your late illness, which I hope will prove in the nature of a seasoning of you to yr climate, and be a meanes of preserving you in health; & hope the Country you are retired unto is a healthy one and safe from Robbers, -- if a lonely family can be so in the country, especially with a woman at the head of it. You have made a choice that I much approve of, the very Expensive town, London, & I hope your farming will not only prove a delightfull & healthy amusement but of benefit to you, at least will not be a Loss; This much depends not only upon having some skill in affaires of that nature yourselfe, but in having good and faithfull servants, (w'ch are rare to be met with so nigh London) and Employing few of them.

I am in some sort in your Condition, being in a place of Collo Thomases about halfe a mile from Trenton, for w'ch I give 60 pounds pr annum, it is a very healthy & a pleasant place. We have all had our health very well since our being here; as for your Mother's illness that would have happened any where. *** Our house is good and not one chimney in it smokes; & we live much more private here than at Morrisana. We have two cows w'ch affords us milk, cream & butter during the summer; and I intend to get two more & Try what I can do for the winter. I have not yet got into plowing & sowing, having but little ground, and that but ordinary & much out of order; but shall try a little at it when I get it into something better fence, which I am doing. Your mother amuses herself with a brood of turkeys, fowles & ducks w'ch she has about her, & now & then some one of her children comes to see her. Mrs. Graham is now here with her youngest son, a fine healthy good humoured boy. Isabell Hooper is allso here, who seemes to be a discreet good humor'd girle, & Peggy is allso with us who has had a touch of the fever & ague which has for some time left. She is very positive, abhors the barke, & being, or pretending to be, a sort of a doctress, will be her own Phisycian. Your brother Robin is at Tinton, and wth a little experience of his own, by the help of Jethro Tull & some other bookes of husbandry, setts up for a Connoisseur in farming: grows fond of it and practises with tolerable success. Your brother Lewis has been very ill of the Jaundice, but is recover'd; and I'm told is now pretty well; is in the Assembly, and has been of great service to Mr Clinton. He has two sons at the Colledge at New Haven, Lewis and Staats; Richard I educate, and he is allso there at the grammar schools, and I am told is a promising youth; his daughter Molly, married to young Lawrence, has a daughter and is call'd a very good housewife and a very discreet young woman. I suppose that from Robin, or some of your sisters, you will learne the state of the rest of the family; so that I will returne to your Mother, who now sits reading in the window it being the 3d of June and her birth day, Just entred on ye 72 yeare of her age *** and is in good health now. ***

You tell me in yours that you had sent me a hogshead of your beer, & that Mr Saint would ship the things I wrote for, & I should wth your letters receive a bill of Lading for them. I thank you for the beer; & when I recieve it shall often remember you in it; but as yet I have no such bill of Lading; nor any account by what shnip, or to what place these things come, or are to come. Your living in the country renders you in a manner unable to transact business of this kind, w'ch is very forreigne to what you are ingaged in; & for that reason I fear troublesome to you, & I feare too trifling for Mr Saint's notice. Perhaps you will be surpris'd when I tell you that the tapes, silks & ferrets were all the worst of their kinds; the silk was only fit for marking, the bobins very coarse; the tapes sent for typing up papers will do, and that's all; -- halfe a dozen pieces of tape were pretty good, but the dozen pieces of plain tape bad & fit only for typing of papers; the pinns and needles were good. I believe had you bought these things yourselfe we should have had the best of the kind; for such only we should send to England for.

I am glad to heare poor Lady Wager is well; pray when you see her make the tender of my kind regards acceptable to her; I hope Sir Charles has left her in a condition above dependance. I hope also this will find Sir John and Lady well, and that you stand in good termes with them both and with the whole family. I'm sorry the storms hindered him from engaging with the French & plucking those Lawrells which it is very likely he would have done on that occasion; pray give my humble service to him & her when you see them. You say nothing to me of your sister Pearse in your letter; however unfortunate or imprudent she is, or is suppos'd to be, yet she is your sister and is a very affectionate one, & I hope will allwaies have your regards. I write to her by this conveyance, and if she can think of coming over I shall take care of her. I pray, if you can, in your next send me some account of her & her husband, for to heare that she has her health will be some satisfaction to,

My deare child, &c.

Your mother Injoins me to give you her blessing. She is not able to write, or at least 'tis very troublesome to her, w'ch is the reason she doth not.

To Mrs. Norris.

Mem. Sent to her for 24 gross of the best velvet corks, 50 ;bs pf tje best Salt Peter and a quarto bible for Peggy.