Sister Hannah,
I have been too busy since the receipt of your letter to write or have anything serious to communicate. We now participate in the drought you mentioned to have prevaded your section of the county earlier in the season, but at the time it was dry weather with you. It was extremely wet and rather cold here but not so much so as to ruin crops except corn, which is rather backward. Hay and grain are in abundance and for the poorer class of people a happy circumstance it is, for money was never more scarce and if provisions were scarce too those that have to buy might suffer. I should not have taken a sabbath morning to write that I expect to leave home early tomorrow morning to be gone some 80 or 90 miles for probably two or thee months and your mind would be left in suspense not knowing the reason I did not write. Our family seem still inclined to impose the task of writing to you upon me and for them to write in my absence would subject you to paying postage. We are all as well as usual except some of us are afflicted ... bad colds. Father and Mother are also well as are all of ... connection in these parts. The Rev. Mr. Whithem (?) our nigh????hbor died a few weeks ago some two hundred miles from ... The loss is severely felt by his family and his widow is ... sick, but we hope not dangerously. Excessive grief possibly ... tends weaken her frail system. The Colera Morbus is .... to some extent in these parts but not in our neighborhood.
Continue to trust in the merits of Christ for acceptance with God and in the promises of his grace for support thro' this vale of tears. Your trials tho severe will not last always. The present is a time of alarming declension in the things of religion in this place. I hope it is not so with you. Pray for us.
You will readily expect from what I have above written that it may be some time before I shall have an Opportunity to writs again, but you will remember to write to the friends here as if you expected that I ... with them. And indeed I may be, for our calculations ... all subject by the will of God. I expect every moment here that the mail has come. Indeed it has come.
Adieu
Joseph R. Osborn
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