This letter was provided by Marjorie Kimble.
August 12, 1856 was a Tuesday.
August 12, 1856
Dear brother and sister and family all
I set me down to inform you we are all well at present and hope that this may find you all enjoying the same blessing. Yours of the twenty fourth of July came to hand yesterday for which I had been looking for sometime. We were glad to hear that you were all well. I have not heard from brother George for sometime. They were all well the last I heard from them. We have a fine prospect for corn crops the best I ever saw. Wheat crops is first rate, Corn will be worth twenty to twent five cts per bushel bacon 8 cts per pound coffee five lbs and a half to the dollar. molasses one dollar and a dime for gallon sugar a bit a pound. We have lots of irish potatoes planted in this section but we do not know how ------[lost]-------
I tryed for a house for you today in Hammondsburg but failed in getting it and will be hard to get a house at this time. You thinking of starting you ought to be here by the first of October It will be a better chance to lay in your winter provisions. There will be lots of work to do and big wages hauling logs and gathering corn.
as to call for blacksmithing I can not say but I know it is high. It would be a first rate idea to lay in your coffe sugar molasses and salt if you knew you would winter here. You will want to buy your pork and salt it away yourself and salt is one dollar and six bits per bushel. I expect to have some pork to sell but I do not know what it will be worth. Milk cows is worth from twenty to thirty dollars. work cattle from fifty to one hundred dollars, horses from one hundred twentyfive to onehundred and sixtyfive, raw prairie from three to five dollars per acre. farms improved ten to fifteen dollars per acre. now if I was certain you would winter here and be here at a certain time I would know how to proceed but should I rent a house and you fail I would have the rent to pay. There is a rush of imigrants every fall that takes up all the vacant houses and for you the sooner the better. it will be hard to sucede in getting a house late in the fall. I would like very much you would bring me a bushel of dried apples of best quality and I will pay you. Dried apples is worth a bit per pound. peaches worth fifteen cents per bushel. the peach trees were all killed here last winter and everywhere that I can hear from. There has been the least sickness in this country since we have been here of any place ever I lived and this summer we have no house flies. Don't think I have seen a half dozen house flies this summer. I would just say wind up as quick as possible and start. If you were here in time you could cut your own hay and it would be nothing but your own labor. If you cross the river at Burlington take the road to Council Bluffs crossing the Des [Moines] River at Red Rock thence to to Pleasantville some eight or ten miles distance thence to Sandyville some ten or twelve miles thence to Hammondsburg seven miles. We live one mile southeast from the burg. This is all that is necessary now that I belief that I can think of. If you wish to know anything more write and I will do the best I can
from James and Ann Walker to F. S. and Catherine Walker