August 18 Sunday – Sam’s notebook:

Elmira, Aug. 18/89. We have been here 2 months; in which time Brer W [Whitmore] has written me some 3 meagre notes about the machine. I wrote once & asked him to tell me anything there was to tell from time to time. No answer. Wrote him & asked him to keep Fred in practice [Fred Whitmore, son] while the machine is stopped. No answer. The mach. stopped Aug 2 — not a line from him to say why, or how much is to be done on it. Suppose it were a sick child of mine? Would he give me any news about it? I suppose it is merely my own disposition — to depend upon Davis or somebody else to do the thing & save you the trouble. How many times I have hopefully opened those envelops in the last 3 years & found not a scratch in them but checks to be signed for the damned household Expenses! [3: 511-12].

Mrs. T.P. McMurry wrote a “begging letter” from Colony, Mo. to Sam. She asked for help for her daughter go to school in Palmyra; her husband died 3 years before [MTP]. Note: this was the wife of Thomas “Pet” McMurray, an employee with Sam on Joseph Ament’s Missouri Courier in Hannibal in 1848. See June, 1848.