CAMPBELL, JOHN, LETTER TO BROTHER DUNCAN IN Harpers Ferry VA, Berkeley Co. VA

Private Collections 20.0 - NC Archives

Submitted by:  Myrtle Bridges, Co-ordinator Hoke County, N.C.
               hbridges @worldnet.att.com - 10 Nov. 1997
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 September 31, 1833
 (Raleigh, N.C.)

  Dear Brother,

 I received your letter this day and I am very happy that you are keeping
your health so well. I was always a little afraid that you might catch the
ague or the bilious or some of these diseases.  I was not too much afraid of
the cholera because I read in some of the newspapers that it never came that
 ... ... ... I never was in better health [than] now. I have been since I
came here. I have got two pays since I came here. The first pay was 24
dollars. The second, which I received last Saturday, was 55 dollars; the
seven dollars that I was allowed for coming along made it the 55. I have
never lost a day since I came here and that is not a bad sign. With regard to
the Englishman, take good care that you be wide awake for him and trust him
nothing that you can possibly help. Never trust any person with any of your
money because you will put yourself more about after them nor they shall do
after you to pay you. Besides, if you was to go any place, you could not get
it when you wanted it. Take care where you keep your money about you. Have it
sewed about you someplace; all but what you require to keep in your pocket.

      I do not know what to say of your plan of going to the West. I am
thinking I will go home to see them when this job is done.  I expect it will
last two years good though. I should get but one year of it. I will have
300 dollars if I keep my health and if I get 2 years of it I will have a good
deal more. So I think you’d better hold on until that time and between both
of us we can buy a pretty good farm. I am thinking in my mind if you was to
go to Illinois or any of the western states you would need to be pretty
strong in your finances to go there and lay out some of your money on a farm,
and if you went home you would have to pay your passage West, there and back
again so that would take away a good deal of money. However, you can consider
what is best to be done, but I think that that would be the best way. You
know that it would give Father and Mother a great deal of happiness to see us
once more, however, I would not let them know what we intend because it
would make every day a month to them. They would be that anxious. When you
write to them let them know that I am well. I will write to them myself in
aweek or two.  Sandy is well and he is going to write home too, but in case
it might go astray, he wants you to tell Father to tell Sandy’s brother where
he is and that he is in good health. He can write a few lines to the Yorwood
with regard to this place.

     I never expected to see such a place in the world. My two dollars per
day is great wages in a healthy place like this. When one can buy and sell on
it once per month and you may rely on it.  I will watch every moment this
hitch. I have given up drinking, smoking and chewing and corrousing and I am
determined to keep myself by myself. This is too good an operation to be
neglected. The job that we are at here is on the State House or an Assembly
House. That is a house to settle the affairs of the State such as give 
charter for railroads and every other such thing as that. 

     The land in general is very poor and sandy. It grows cotton and tobacco
and Indian corn but the corn is not so good as in the North. This town is the
Capital of North Carolina.  There are about 1700 inhabitants in it. There was
once more in it but there was a good deal of it burnt.  The old State House
was burnt that we are replacing now. I will tell you all that I know about
this place in my next.

 I am, Dear Brother, your affectionate 
John Campbell.

 P.S. William Clark is working here and is doing well. Tell my father if he
sees any chaps in Sterling to send word to his father that he is well.

John Campbell.

Note: The name, Duncan Campbell, is written on the face of this letter, which
is very dark with age. The next words appear to be Harpers Ferry, Virginia.