Dear friend,

Yours of the 7^th just to hand and read in a very short time, don’t take long to read the most of farmers letters, they are generally short, there is but few of them that write often, but I appreciate a letter from a friend just as much as another and make all necessary allowances for the handwrite composition spelling, its being short Sc Sc. As I wrote you I am aiming to get out next Monday on the road to work and it is so much easier and satisfactory to write on my typewriter since I have got in the habit of using it, and thought I had better answer it at once.

Dick Spencer was my brother and four years older, he lived in that Grand Glaxe section till they all got filled up with malaria good and proper. They then went up in Stodder Co., Mo., on the St. Francis whare it was just as I went down there in Jan 72 after the death of Lucinda and found him and his wife and every child (four or five) all just chilling every day and as dead as I ever saw people to be alive. I begged him to get out of there and they all did move back to Ky in 73 I think it was and all regained their health, stayed there till 76 I think that date was and they went back to Bollinger Co. in the hills of Mo. and lived there a few years, neighbor to John and Phil Maloney, they used to live near the bury and were two as mean cusses as ever lived any whare, but Dick kept drifting towards the swamps after fishing and hunting till they got in to North Stoddard Co., Mo., again and just stayed right in there till first his wife, then a son, next a daughter died one after another, two or three of the boys were living when in the first of the eightys I think, can’t remember without reference to my old family Bible which is in Ky., his oldest boy married down there and I go in there in 1898 I think since I’ve been traveling and saw him and youngest boy borned after they went down there the last time and the married son had one child and I begged him to get out of there as is always the case, yes, I’m going to get out of here but they never do till they are hauled out. He died a few years after I was there and I was in there again five or six years ago and I learned the youngest and last boy had died previous. Himself, wife and six children all dead everyone five or more years ago.

That was Hardin Asburn son of old Aunt Fanny Ashburn that was murdered at Charleston, shot in the back after they had taken him prisoner after he was shot off his horse but was able to still ride and they started in town with him, Andy Beal, Bill Wiliams, Peter Biggs, Amos Jones and George Pruitt. As Beal told me afterwards in prison that he saw one of the Yankees shoot him in the back again and Dr. Jim Davidson went up there and stayed with him till he died and he said the shot in the back was the one that killed him. He lived about two weeks is my recollection, he had two older brothers Randell and Rob, both are living yet, Rob at or about Sebree and Randall at Corydon.

Yes, John Watson is living, Fanny is dead years ago. John can get just as drunk as he ever did and is just as hateful as a possum married the second time to a designing woman of some sort from Evansville, Indiana, and she got quite a little bit of his long green in getting loose from him I think.

I saw Atho Linthicun and Macy back there at a camp meeting in Sebree a few years ago. Macy is as big as a skinned horse.

Dr. Atho and John Watson had some big old styled drunks I heard while they were visiting back there. They live in Jones, Okla, northeast of Oklahoma City I think. I’ve passed through there.

Alfonso Eakins married one widow Jabe a good hustleing woman. Alfonso quit booze, joined Christian Church years ago, is doing well.

George Edwards dressed well as a Philadelphia lawyer but got drunk and wallowed like a hog, finally married Jinny Lisles in Henderson Co. and she was as pretty as a speckled pig and stuck on herself before marriage but still worse after marrying as she thought she married some Lord of England and she puffed old George up till he came near bursting, he never did have any sense. He run a dive and sold whisky to negros till he got a little money and got to buying tobacco and lost every dollar of it, he took out big insurance on an old factory, hired one Mase Rhode to set it on fire, Mase was an exconvict and that’s all that kept Mr. Edwards from going to jail and he got no insurance after burning and he went on down and down till he is a vag and his wife works for a living, they had two children, boy and a girl, boy was no good drifted off. I haven’t heard of him for years, the girl just like her father and mother both to pretty and fine to walk on the ground. She married into a very high-toned family supposed to be big rich and her husband wasn’t worth thirty cents only to consume booze, shot his wife once but she got well and they hushed that up but they finally separated and he went crooked and he finally died with delirium tremmers in the city jail I heard.

Jim Edwards married Fanny Willingham, never drank, he just got insurance on a little old store at the Burge that caught fire and burned then he went to Sebree opened up, got more insurance as that caught fire and burned, poor fellow, he just retired and raised bees, sold honey, was close and economical. They never had but one child, a boy, pampered him from the start, sent him to school, educated him for a physician and Dr. Wirt Edwards was the only doctor there was and he married one of the sure enough prettiest girls in Henderson County, Corydon. She staid with the doctor till she got tired of him, then went on the stage and the last I ever heard of any of them they were in St. Louis and Jim by the day for a living.

Such is life, the bottom rail gets on the top some times. Well if I don’t stop we won’t have anything to talk about sure enough when I get there if I ever do, but we can just talk the same old talk over and over again I guess, can’t we?

Excuse my mistakes

Your old friend
as ever

S. W. Spencer

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